A prototype of Tesla's Optimus robot.
CFOTO/Future Publishing via Getty Images
Elon Musk built Tesla into the world's most valuable carmaker. Now he's betting the company's future on a robot that walks on two legs.Musk predicts its robot, Optimus, could become "the biggest product ever," with legions of the humanoid robots working in factories, doing household chores, and eventually building more robots. He even has a name for them in the plural: "Optimi."But Tesla has yet to prove the robot can navigate the physical world or perform useful work autonomously, much less that it can be manufactured by the millions.On Tesla's earnings call this week, Musk offered few details about Optimus and tempered expectations for how quickly production would increase. He said Tesla would begin producing its third-generation robot "soon" in Fremont in the San Francisco Bay Area.Tesla is competing in an increasingly crowded humanoid market. Agility Robotics, which plans to go public, has deployed its Digit robot across nine customer facilities, while Figure AI has announced deployments in logistics and distribution centers this year. Sunday Robotics, 1X, and Weave Robotics are preparing to ship robots into homes this fall.Guy Hoffman, an associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at Cornell University who leads its human-robot collaboration lab, called humanoids a "fantasy product."Autonomous cars took about 20 years to reach the market after the technology was first shown to work, he told Business Insider. Building humanoids is even harder, and a fully autonomous machine has yet to be developed.
