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Anyone looking to have Tesla’s Optimus work in their factories or walk their dog may have to wait for another two years as CEO Elon Musk has revealed that the humanoid robots will only be ready for use by 2026. However, they could be seen on the Tesla factory floor a lot sooner.
“Tesla will have genuinely useful humanoid robots in low production for Tesla internal use next year and, hopefully, high production for other companies in 2026,” Musk said in a post on X on Monday, July 22.
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Back in April, Musk had presented a timeline wherein Optimus robots would be shipped to other companies by 2025. At Tesla’s annual shareholder meeting held in Texas, US, last month, the automaker’s plans for Optimus was one of the main highlights with Musk attempting to convince investors that it would be good for business.
Elon Musk first revealed that Tesla would be developing humanoid robots during the company’s AI Day event back in 2021. As part of the announcement, a human dressed in a skin tight suit did a robot walk onstage which many found bizarre.
In 2022, Musk gave the public its first actual look at its bipedal robot prototype named Bumblebee which was able to walk onstage and wave to the crowd. A demo video showed that it can pick up and move boxes in an office environment.
But, Optimus does not seem to have autonomous movement yet. While Musk shared a demo video of Optimus Gen 2 folding laundry on a table earlier this year, he later had to clarify that the robot was not doing this by itself after social media users pointed out that Optimus could be moving its arms in sync with a human who was out of the frame.
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This hasn’t stopped Musk from hyping up Optimus as he envisions the humanoid robot to have use cases beyond industrial work.
“I think people will start to regard their personal Optimus robot as sort of a friend,” the billionaire has said in the past. “You can just ask it to walk your dog, take care of your house, babysit the kids, cook dinner, play the piano – so it’s a generalised humanoid robot,” he added.
Several major players in the robotics industry have developed prototypes that appear to be far more sophisticated than Tesla’s Optimus. Over the years, Hyundai-backed Boston Dynamics has showed off many bipedal robot prototypes that are capable of standing on one leg, doing backflips, and picking themselves up when they fall, among other actions.
Japanese carmaker Honda has also been making steady progress with its advanced robot called ASIMO that is mainly designed to interact and assist humans with everyday tasks rather than heavy duty, factory work.
More recently, BMW joined hands with Microsoft and Nvidia-backed startup Figure to deploy humanoid robots in the German car manufacturer’s US facility.
