Tesla Optimus… and the future

A year ago, at Tesla AI Day 2021, the company “presented” the Tesla Bot, somebody dressed in a robot costume jumping up and down to music. A year later, on Friday, we saw a true prototype still in development, still very unglamorous, but real and tangible, as predicted in 2021.

The demonstration saw the prototype wave and take a few extremely cautious steps, while a second model that still cannot walk had to be awkwardly dragged by several people on to the stage. But at this point, rather than discuss features, or the lack of them, it makes more sense to focus on the vision and plans of a company that, until now, operated in the automotive and energy fields, and that now seems ready, reusing many of its developments, to enter the field of advanced robotics.

What do we need humanoid robots for? To start with, does a robot even need to look like a human being? Do we need a Tesla robot that can barely take a few shaky steps when we are already sick of seeing robots from companies like Boston Dynamics dancing or doing parkour? For Elon Musk, the question lies in understanding the difference between a robot programmed to specifically do a series of things and one that understands context and is able to interact with it, as would an autonomous or semi-autonomous vehicle, which can do useful things without being specifically instructed to do so, and which, moreover, can be…