Tesla's humanoid robot takes another step (towards the outside world)

© Around the World Photos/Shutterstock.com

While the automobile is currently its core business, Tesla is also interested in robotics. And among its most ambitious projects, there is the Optimus robot. This is a humanoid that the company is developing to carry out repetitive or dangerous tasks, and which could also serve as a domestic robot. For the moment, it is not known when Tesla will market this robot. But in the meantime, Elon Musk's company regularly publishes videos that show the progress of the project.

A new step

For example, recently we relayed a video published by Tesla that showed the skills of the new hand of the robot Optimus which, thanks to new degrees of freedom, is able to catch a tennis ball. And more recently, it is Optimus' legs that have been highlighted by the company. While we are used to watching videos of Optimus in Tesla factories, on a stage or in a lab, the new video posted by the company on X shows a humanoid robot walking outside.

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This video is important because it shows that the robot is now able to walk on this type of terrain, which is more complicated to manage than the floor of a factory or a laboratory. Milan Kovac, head of engineering at Optimus, explains that this is a place where it has slipped before. “What’s really crazy here is that for this, Optimus is actually blind! It keeps its balance without video (for now), with only other onboard sensors consumed by a neural network running in ~2-3ms on its onboard computer”, the manager also explained. But the Optimus team already intends to add vision, so that the robot can better plan its paths. It will also have to make the gait more natural and teach the robot to fall to minimize damage, when a fall is inevitable.

New uses in sight

The fact that Optimus will be able to walk outdoors will be very important, since it will allow more uses for this robot, which is already being tested in Tesla factories. For the moment, humanoid robots are under development. But over the next decade, the market could explode. Some analysts predict that this market could be worth tens of billions of dollars in ten years. And Elon Musk even predicts that by 2040, there will be more robots than humans on Earth.

• Tesla's Optimus robot is now able to walk outdoors, on floors that are more difficult to manage than factory floors
• However, Tesla engineers still need to improve the posture and the robot must learn to fall to limit damage when a fall is unavoidable
• The fact that the robot can work outdoors is important, because it will allow it to have more uses

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