AI & Humanoids

Tesla's Optimus Gen 2 humanoid: A lot more Model S than Cybertruck

Tesla's Optimus Gen 2 humanoid: A lot more Model S than Cybertruck
The new Tesla Optimus Gen 2 humanoid demonstrates Tesla's extraordinary development pace
The new Tesla Optimus Gen 2 humanoid demonstrates Tesla's extraordinary development pace
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The new Tesla Optimus Gen 2 humanoid demonstrates Tesla's extraordinary development pace
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The new Tesla Optimus Gen 2 humanoid demonstrates Tesla's extraordinary development pace
The new Optimus seems to have taken its dancing inspiration from Musk himself
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The new Optimus seems to have taken its dancing inspiration from Musk himself
Tactile sensing in every finger of its new hands
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Tactile sensing in every finger of its new hands
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Tesla has completely overhauled its humanoid robot. The Optimus Gen 2 is 10 kg (22 lb) lighter, 30% faster, a lot smoother and more capable, and it looks much more human in the way it moves. It's also got new hands and feet, and some of Elon's style.

It certainly seems Tesla's robotics team is moving with its CEO's typical sense of manic urgency. It's a little over two years since Musk first announced the company was getting into the humanoid game, but Tesla had functional prototypes up and running in a jiffy. By March this year, the company had a brand new "Optimus" robot and was showing some impressive capabilities. And a scant ten months later, an all-new Optimus Gen 2 body is the new state of the art.

The Gen 2 bot gets two degrees of freedom in its neck, integrated electronics and wiring, and a more human foot shape with articulated toe sections and force/torque sensors. It also gets brand new hands, with 11 degrees of movement freedom, faster actuators, and tactile sensors on all its fingers to enable more deft manipulation of objects.

Tactile sensing in every finger of its new hands
Tactile sensing in every finger of its new hands

It looks much more streamlined and humanoid, moves much more smoothly, balances better and walks a fair bit less like it's soiled its trousers, although you still wouldn't want to get in an elevator with anyone walking like that.

With new white bodywork, it's more Model S than the old Optimus's bare-metal Cybertruck look. But it's also 10% lighter. And as the video below shows, it's also gained the ability to dance at least as well as Elon himself.

It's a super-impressive new robot, and the pace of hardware development here has been absolutely wild, even if Tesla still seems a fair way behind Boston Dynamics and its remarkable Atlas robot in terms of athleticism and capability. But Atlas isn't designed to be mass manufactured – an area in which Musk and Tesla have proven themselves every bit as innovative as they have with their products. Indeed, Atlas is at this stage merely a research platform, while Tesla, Figure, Agility, Fourier, Sanctuary, Apptronik and many others are explicitly preparing humanoids to hit the workforce en masse.

As stunning as Tesla's new hardware looks, the hardware is probably the least important hurdle here. What all the humanoid makers need to do is demonstrate their robots doing real work, in the real world, in a repeatable, reliable and flexible manner. That's when they'll start stepping in and changing the world.

The new Optimus seems to have taken its dancing inspiration from Musk himself
The new Optimus seems to have taken its dancing inspiration from Musk himself

And for a glimpse at how that's currently going, check out how quickly Toyota is teaching robots to use tools and complete various kitchen tasks. Spoiler: visual AIs are watching humans work and learning new capabilities within hours. The pace of progress in 2023 has been absolutely staggering, friends, and it's only going to accelerate from here. Major upheavals are coming from all directions.

Source: Tesla

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5 comments
5 comments
Smokey_Bear
Tesla doing what Tesla does best (pull further away from the competition).
Ric
Floored by the elegance of the opening scene, on the floor laughing at the footage of the walking creature definitely looking like there’s a giant load in its diaper that it’s being extremely careful to not let slip out the side and slide down the leg.
Cymon Curcumin
Walking speed and grace may be constrained by compute. If so then improvements in multimodal neural networks and the size of the training data would improve performance. The fact that it is being trained via video input instead of programming every act is likely why it has gone from not being able to stand to manipulate eggs in a bout a year. Will it ever be able to peel the egg? Maybe not but maybe 🤔. The shifting of weight while moving arms is very organic. Previous robotic humanoids just kind of rocked when they moved. That slight toe force/sensing ability may not be human level for a bare foot but is an improvement over spatula feet—more like a hard shoe.
veryken
I'm curious about the purpose. Other companies make human-like robots to fit legacy human workflows and physical work environments with improved superhuman strength or endurance or durability, hence, profitability. It's practical. This Optimus Gen2's purpose? Is it stronger? Faster? Speak more languages? Fit into common human clothes better? But why? Why the more humanlike appearance that's nothing more than better agility? Seems like an early stage love doll robot.
Daveb
See that right there, the subtle joke about getting in the elevator, is authentic personality humor. Once the AI starts riffing like that, we're all doomed.