The most discussed robot this week has been the Optimus shown at the Tesla AI day 2022. There is a lot of press from top media outlets. Most experts in robotics agree that while the demo was impressive in terms of actions from a free standing untethered robot, Tesla has still a lot of room to catch up when compared with state of the art humanoid robots such as those from Boston Dynamics. IEEE Spectrum has a couple of neat articles, covering the demo, and comments from experts.
In this article, we will try to learn what advantages Tesla brings to the field of robotics, and try to understand what competitive advantages does Tesla have, which could make it successful with the Optimus. But first, let’s try to analyze why Tesla and Elon Musk are interested in a humanoid robot.
Why is Tesla investing in the Optimus?
Tesla has two main lines of business: electric cars and harnessing energy. Electric cars is the dominant business, and years of delivering cars at a fast cadence has provided Tesla…