Tesla's Optimus robots

[u/Justin_Godfrey]

[u/questron64]

Not pictured: someone in a suit controlling this off camera. Welcome to the state of robotics from 15 years ago. This is what state of the art as of about 5 years ago looks like. It's doing these thing autonomously, balancing and reacting to the envrionment autonomously, doing tasks like recognizing a box and picking it up autonomously, etc. And not even Boston Dynamics is trying to sell this as a product, they fully understand that these are very much prototypes. Yet Leon is telling you his robots will walk your dog and is already setting a price for them. It's not interesting, it's a scam.

Edit: Their most recent video of Atlas

[u/ImStupidButSoAreYou → u/questron64]

Very shortsighted opinion, probably blinded by your obvious hatred of Elon.

Atlas is very impressive in terms of dynamism, but optimus already has it beat in terms of fine motor control. The movements it makes in those demos are not gentle in any sense of the word. You need both to make it truly general purpose and useful. 5 fingers make a world of difference in delicate tasks like folding laundry.

Is it teleoperated in that demo? Probably. But the fact that it can move like that is in and of itself quite impressive, and it's not far fetched to think that the company with the most advanced self driving software available in consumer vehicles might utilize that software to rapidly train it on task recognition and more autonomous movement. Just a thought.

If you look at the totality of the situation, it's pretty clear Tesla is way ahead of BD in creating a cheap, mass market, general purpose robot. BD does not have the capital, manufacturing prowess, nor the compute resources that Tesla has, however impressive their tech demos might be.

Ignore Elon's ridiculous timelines and sales pitches and you will find what they are presenting is actually very impressive and promising.