WATCH: Tesla robot ‘Optimus’ waves as Musk plans to make millions

South African born Space X and Tesla CEO Elon Musk has showcased his much-touted humanoid robot “Optimus” at the electric vehicle maker’s “AI Day” event.

The experimental test robot that Tesla said was developed in February walked out to wave at the crowd on Friday, and Tesla showed a video of it doing simple tasks, such as watering plants, carrying boxes and lifting metal bars at a production station at the company’s California plant.

Robot business

Musk said a robot business will be worth more than its cars, hoping to expand beyond self-driving vehicles that have not yet become a reality despite his repeated promises.

Musk predicted Tesla would be able to produce millions of the robots and sell them for less than a third of the price of its Model Y SUV.

“Our goal is to make a useful humanoid robot as quickly as possible and we’ve also designed it using the same discipline that we use in designing the car, which is to say, to design it for manufacturing, such that is possible to make the robot in high volume, at low cost with higher liability.”

Capable robots

“Optimus is designed to be an extremely capable robot made but made in very high volume, probably ultimately millions of units and it’s expected to cost much less than a car, so, I would say probably less than $ 20 000 dollars, would be my guess,” Musk said.

He said existing humanoid robots are “missing a brain” – and the ability to solve problems on their own.

Orders

Musk added that he expected Tesla would be ready to take orders for the robot in three to five years but that more work needed to be done.

Tesla also discussed its long-delayed self-driving technology at the event.

Engineers working on the auto self-driving software described how they trained software to choose actions, such as when to merge into traffic, and how they sped up the computer decision-making process.

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