Tesla's Optimus Bot Is Now Able To Learn New Skills With No Programming Involved

Tesla unveiled the Optimus humanoid robot last September during AI Day, although it wasn't much to show then. The robot could not walk and had to be carried on stage on a platform. It then waved clumsily to the crowd as if it wanted to say it was not ready to become a Terminator yet. As you'd imagine, the Tesla Bot team wasn't wasting time improving the bot, and it looks like Optimus has been a very diligent student.

In a video projected during the 2023 Annual Shareholder Meeting on May 16, Tesla showed that the Optimus Bot had learned new tricks. Most notably, the robot can now walk on its own, although it does so fairly slowly. Still, watching the gang of five bots in the video creeping in front of the three Cybertruck prototypes is mesmerizing. The video reveals that walking is not the only skill Optimus has acquired in the past seven months.

The robot can also recognize objects and pick them up, all while leveraging its AI superpowers. The robotic hands can also be gentle enough not to break an egg's shell, demonstrating impressive torque control skills. Optimus can also do environment discovery and memorization while walking around and exploring the world. As Musk revealed during the Cyber Roundup meeting, Optimus is not much of a thinker right now, as the team concentrates on safety. Still, it will evolve exponentially as it learns new tricks.

As revealed by the Tesla team, no task-specific programming was necessary to acquire the new skills. Instead, the bots used Tesla Vision and AI learning the same way FSD-enabled vehicles do. This helps the bot track human movements, learning different things from the interaction. This end-to-end AI learning process helped Optimus make his first successful grasp right on time for the Cyber Roundup video. After watching humans perform the same task, Optimus can also recognize and sort objects in two boxes.

Musk is confident that the FSD technology will be much more important for robots than cars. He also believes that the number of humanoid robots Tesla will produce will far outnumber vehicle production. Musk went so far as to say that the company's future depends on Optimus's success. He previously said the same thing about the FSD software, although in a more gloomy tone. "Tesla’s long-term value, a majority of its value, will be Optimus. And that’s a prediction I’m confident of," Musk said during the Q&A session.