Elon Musk announced that Tesla could have a working prototype of the Tesla Bot, also known as Optimus, Tesla’s humanoid robot, by September 30 – the end of the third quarter of 2022.
Last month Musk announced “Tesla AI Day #2” with “lots of cool updates” on August 19th.
The original Tesla AI Day, held last year, was an event focused on the company’s self-driving program. The automaker also unveiled its Dojo supercomputer and announced plans for the “Tesla Bot” humanoid robot — now known as the Tesla Optimus.
AI Day #2 was scheduled to take place exactly one year to the day after the first, but Musk took to Twitter today to push the event back to September 30.
As a reason for the delay, the CEO said Tesla may have a working prototype of Optimus by then:
Tesla AI Day has been pushed back to September 30 due to the possibility of an Optimus prototype being operational by then
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 3, 2022
When the project was first announced last year, Musk said Tesla would have a working prototype by the end of 2022, and recently the CEO even said the company aims to start production of the robot in 2023.
This is an extremely ambitious timeline for such an ambitious project, but Musk has said on multiple occasions that it has become a priority.
In January, the CEO said Tesla will prioritize product development of the humanoid robot Optimus over other products in 2022.
Tesla plans to use its existing expertise in power electronics and electric vehicle batteries to build the robot and use its AI expertise to give it a brain.
Musk said the robot would first be programmed to perform simple and repetitive tasks, including at manufacturing plants like Tesla’s.
Tesla plans to improve the robot over time and be able to perform a wider range of tasks that would make it useful for both commercial and consumer applications.
If successful, the project could have a massive impact on economies, which explains why Tesla has shifted its focus to it.
Musk later even claimed that Tesla could play a role in making artificial general intelligence (AGI) a reality through the humanoid robot project.
It sounds like we should learn a lot more about it on September 30th.
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