Tesla's Optimus Robot Is Now Walking Faster While Swaying Its Arms: 'More Stable And More Confident Overall'

Tesla Inc TSLA, on Saturday, shared a short video of its Optimus humanoid robot walking around its factory with a faster gait.

What Happened: “This is our fastest gait ever at ~0.6 m/s, > 30% speed boost since our last video in December,” Milan Kovac wrote on X, formerly Twitter. Kovac is part of Tesla’s Optimus Engineering team.

Since December, Tesla has improved Optimus’ vestibular system, foot trajectory, ground contact logic, and motion planner, Kovac said.

“Optimus is more stable and more confident overall – even during turns. We also added a slight torso & arms sway,” the executive said on the company’s efforts at making the bot as human as possible.

This is our fastest gait ever at ~0.6 m/s, > 30% speed boost since our last video in December.

We've improved our vestibular system, our foot trajectory, and our ground contact logic. We've upgraded our motion planner, and made cuts to the loop latency across the bot. Optimus… https://t.co/CXwkjujD6S

— Milan Kovac (@_milankovac_) February 24, 2024

During Tesla’s fourth-quarter earnings call in January, CEO Elon Musk expressed optimism about delivering some units of its Optimus humanoid robot next year.

"I think we've got a good chance of shipping some number of Optimus units next year," Musk said. However, the CEO also warned that there is a lot of uncertainty and it is impossible to make a precise prediction.

Musk then said that Tesla will be providing updates on progress with Optimus every few months and is currently focused on making it safer. "I do think it has the potential to be the most valuable product of any kind ever by far," the CEO added.

Roadblocks On The Way: The biggest barrier the company faces with Optimus is getting it to do something useful, a Tesla executive said in January. While the robot can already do moderately specialized tasks, the company is aiming to make it do generalized tasks.

During Tesla’s second-quarter earnings call in July, Musk said that the bots will be able to do something useful in Tesla factories starting in 2024.

However, the CEO or any other Tesla executive did not provide any timeline for deploying the robot at a Tesla factory this year during the fourth quarter earnings call.

Tesla introduced its humanoid bot in 2021 with the initial goal of handling unsafe, repetitive, or tedious tasks. 

Photo via Shutterstock

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