Tesla Reveals Optimus, a Walking Humanoid Robot You Could Buy in 2027

Tesla CEO Elon Musk on Friday unveiled the company’s Tesla Bot, a robot codenamed Optimus that shuffled across a stage, waved, and pumped its arms in a low-speed dance move. The robot could cost $20,000 within three to five years, he said.

“Our goal is to make a useful humanoid robot as quickly as possible,” Musk said. It could eventually “help millions of people,” but the first uses will be in Tesla’s car factories, he said.

The robot wasn’t as flashy as some others, like Boston Dynamics’ parkour-capable Atlas, but it’s what Tesla put together in less than eight months. “The robot can do a lot more than what we showed you. We just didn’t want it to fall on its face,” Musk quipped at Tesla AI Day 2022, an event designed to showcase the robot and the company’s autonomous vehicle technology, called Full Self-Driving, or FSD.

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Ultimately, Musk wants to build Tesla Bots by the millions, taking advantage of hardware, software, manufacturing and supply chain advantages developed for its car business. Take the company’s projections with a shakerful of salt, though. Tesla has succeeded as an automaker, leading the rest of the industry toward an electric vehicle future, but it’s missed many deadlines along the way.

The Optimus effort, while still early, is among the most ambitious in the robotics world given how widespread and capable Tesla hopes the robots can become. But progress is hard. Rivals like Boston Dynamics have worked for years on humanoid robots but so far have produced only prototypes. More common are robots with more limited abilities, like wheeled delivery bots or Amazon’s Astro, a household camera-equipped tablet on wheels.

Artificial intelligence technology works best with narrow jobs, but Tesla’s car piloting technology and robots must reckon with immense real-world variety. Optimus will likely lead a sheltered life to start. The company plans to use it first in Tesla’s own factories.

Jobs could include carrying parts to conventional robots on the manufacturing line, Musk said.

“The number of situations where Optimus is useful will grow exponentially,” Musk said. “Really, really fast.”