Tesla’s humanoid robot ‘Optimus’ has evolved to the point where it can walk like a human. On the 24th, Tesla CEO Elon Musk released a video of ‘Optimus’ walking on his X (old Twitter).
The 1 minute and 18 second video shows this humanoid robot, which resembles a human being, walking around the lab on two legs like a human. Although it seemed a bit hesitant, this robot walked smoothly on its own without relying on people or falling. Musk only posted the title “Optimus strolling around the lab” without any specific mention of the video. This Optimus video was released about a month ago on the 16th of last month. At the time, Musk posted a video of Optimus folding his shirt.
The 31-second video shows Optimus taking a shirt out of a basket with his fingers, spreading it out on a table, and then folding it. This robot is the ‘2nd generation’, an evolved version of ‘Optimus’ that Tesla unveiled in December last year. Tesla introduced at the time that it could walk about 30% faster than before and move five fingers smoothly.
In the video, Optimus stretches out his arms forward, kneels at a 90-degree angle, picks up an egg with his thumb and forefinger, carefully places it on a cooking pot, and dances to the music. Tesla first announced plans to begin developing humanoid robots in 2021 and then unveiled the Optimus prototype in late September 2022.
At the time, Musk held the ‘Tesla AI Day’ event and showed off the Optimus prototype, promising that “robots will create a prosperous future and a future without poverty.” He said, “We will make Optimus a very high-performance robot and mass-produce millions of units,” and that orders can be received for less than $20,000 (approximately 26 million won) within 3 to 5 years.
This video of Musk was posted a day after news broke that big tech companies were investing heavily in Figure AI, a competitor in the humanoid robot field. On the 23rd, Bloomberg News reported that Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and NVIDIA are investing in Figure AI. It was reported that they would invest $100 million and $50 million, respectively, in this startup.
Microsoft (MS) and ChatGPT developer OpenAI are also reported to have invested $95 million and $5 million, respectively, in this startup . The news agency reported that venture capital of $25 million, and LG Innotek and Samsung investment organizations also pledged $8.5 million and $5 million, respectively. Figure AI will be founded in 2022 by engineers from Tesla and Boston Dynamics, a robotics company.
It is developing an AI-based robot that looks and moves like a human, and introduced a robot called ‘Figure 01’ in March last year. The goal is to enable it to perform dangerous tasks that humans cannot do and to solve the problem of insufficient labor. As the craze for AI technology grows, competition in the development of humanoid robots has become more intense.
In addition to Optimus and Figure AI, ‘1X Technology AS’ is developing a bipedal robot with ChatGPT, and a Canadian startup Sanctuary AI is developing a humanoid robot called Phoenix.