Tesla aims to sell a humanoid robot by 2025, says its chief executive Elon Musk. During an earnings call with investors, Musk said that although Tesla’s ‘Optimus’ line of humanoid robots was still being developed in the laboratory, the devices were now capable of performing simple tasks in a factory setting and would likely be able to complete more complex duties by the end of this year. However, the billionaire added that these timelines were fungible.
“I think Optimus will be more valuable than everything else combined because if you’ve got a sentient humanoid robot that is able to navigate reality and do tasks at request, there is no meaningful limit to the size of the economy,” said Musk. “I think Tesla is best positioned of any humanoid robot maker to be able to reach volume production with efficient inference on the robot itself.”
Growing market for humanoid robots
Tesla originally announced Optimus in 2022, promising that the humanoid robot would be a “general purpose, bipedal, autonomous humanoid robot capable of performing unsafe, repetitive or boring tasks.” Since then, the company has published occasional video updates documenting the robot’s milestones. In February, for example, Musk shared a clip of an Optimus unit walking across a Tesla factory floor, following a video two months previously depicting the automaton poaching an egg.
If released in 2025, Optimus would join a burgeoning market for humanoid robots capable of performing tasks on assembly lines. Previously considered to be little more than exhibition pieces – Honda’s ASIMO, for example, was discontinued in 2022 after spending two decades as a marketing tool – bipedal automatons have now been deployed in factories belonging to BMW and Mercedes. Recent advances in AI have also spurred interest among big tech players in creating advanced robotic devices: earlier this month, for instance, Google Deepmind announced that it has harnessed new techniques in deep reinforcement learning to get miniature humanoid robots to play a compelling game of football.
Tesla profits decline, but Optimus thought key to long-term expansion
Musk’s announcement of a prospective release date for Optimus comes after Tesla announced a 55% decline in its first-quarter profits, as it faces increased competition in the electric vehicles market. In the short term, the firm has announced that it will rein in its expenditures by making up to 9% of its workforce redundant. Work on Optimus, however, will continue, with Musk stating in January that its investment in humanoid robots had the potential to transform Tesla into a $10trn company (the firm had a market capitalisation of $460.77bn at the time of writing.)
Musk also claimed that Tesla would “solve autonomy” for vehicles in the next few years. The billionaire was cautious, however, on the prospect of Optimus being able to autonomously navigate all of its surroundings – or whether that would even be desirable. “If we have a super-sentient humanoid robot that can follow you indoors and that you can escape, we’re talking terminator risk,” he said. “And yes, I’d be uncomfortable with [that].”
Read more: Humanoid robots: separating fact from science fiction
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