Tesla Optimus has shown improved walking and improved actuators. The actuators will continue to be improved.
The walking was mastered using reinforcement learning in a digital simulation. This training approach is used by all of the leading humanoid bot companies.
The reports and claims from the humanoid robot companies is that training of skills is going very well and very quickly with AI/simulation training and recordings of teleoperation and motion capture from human trainers.
Accurate actuators accelerate automation pic.twitter.com/5H0uHxf7v2
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 2, 2025
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
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How it compares with Unitree robot?
When will they be able to dance and do back flips like the Boston dynamics robots?
Tesla is way behind in the cool video battle.
The gait is improved but still look unnatural. Looks like it’s leaning backwards a bit too much.
The human gait is a product of our brains continually optimizing our motions for reduced energy expenditure. I don’t see why a robot couldn’t do the same.
They need to start mass producing now. Production ramp up will largely determine who will take the lead. Tasks and speed will come along as the software is updated every few months. So, even if the software may not yet be to the point where it competes on task speed with humans, that will be achieved in a year or three. At that time there will be a higher market demand and whichever company is producing hardware at the rate to meet that demand will sell their robots just as fast as they can produce them. Additional tasks meaning another market demand met will be developed no less frequent than weekly.
Now, people look at the current labor market as the TAM. That’s not quite right. The market size in terms of dollars will be the value of the future labor market as met by future, competing robots. So, the total dollar size of that market will contract significantly as robots replace expensive humans.
Yeah, but who’s going to dish out $50+K for an android that’s going to be obsolete within 12 months? The speed of advancement is happening too fast. A new generation will be coming out every 18-24 months.
I’m glad they are keeping their Gen 3 behind closed doors, China has stolen many things from them, partially Tesla’s fault, by having way too detailed demonstrations.
I would guestimate mid to late summer, we see the Gen3, their first mass production bot.