AsianFin -- Tesla Inc. is going to showcase the latest development of its general-purpose robotic humanoid in China.
Credit：Tesla
Optimus Gen 2, Tesla’s second generation humanoid robot, will be presented at the 2024 World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WDIC) held in Shanghai from July 4 to 7, according to a post from the company on on Chinese social media platform Weibo on Wednesday. Calling Optimus Gen 2 an artificial intelligence (AI)-core friend, Tesla said visitors will witness the re-evolution of humanoid robots and explore the secrets of Tesla more than cars at the booth H1-B108 during the WDIC.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk will deliver a key note at the opening ceremony of WDIC on Thursday, according to an agenda released earlier this week. Chinese Premier Li Qiang will also make a speech at the opening. While the agenda didn’t specify whether Musk will appear in person or via video, Reuters cited people with knowledge of the matter that the head of Tesla was expected to attend the ceremony personally.
The post partially confirmed reports about Tesla’s presentation at the WDIC. Tesla was reported to debut Optimus Gen 2 and Cybertruck later this week. Optimus Gen 2 is equipped with in-house designed actuators and sensors, with ability to walk 30% faster than its predecessor. Tesla CEO Elon Musk said in May that Optimus’ hands will be upgraded to have 22 degrees of freedom (DoF). That’s already very close to a human’s hands, which have 27 degrees of freedom.
“Optimus hands are among the best 5-finger, dexterous robot hands in the world. It’s got tactile sensing, 11 degrees of freedom (DoF) compared to many competitors with only 6-7 DoF, and robustness to withstand lots of object interactions without constant maintenance,” Jim Fan, senior research scientist at Nvidia Corporation, commented on a video Tesla unveiled in May. Fan highlighted Optimus has has a fluid whole body controller that enacts the human poses in real-time. He noted it is very non-trivial to set up the software to have first-person video streamed in and precise control streamed out, while maintaining extremely low latency.
Tesla said last month it has two Optimus robots that autonomously move around the company's office and laboratories every day. It also said it had started deploying two Optimus bots in its Gigafactory Texas, performing tasks autonomously.The tasks it was responsible for included sorting battery cells and other simple things. Tesla said it would be able to eliminate monotonous work that is boring to humans when its first-generation robot was unveiled.
At the company’s annual stockholder meeting that month, Musk revealed Optimus Gen 2 is being produced for $10,000 and there will be over 1,000, or a few thousand Optimus robots working at Tesla in 2025. Musk expected Optimus robots some day will perform like R2-D2 and C-3PO in “Star Wars.” They could cook or clean for you, do factory work, or even teach your children, the chief executive suggested. As for shareholder value, Musk believes Optimus could be the catalyst for lifting Tesla’s market cap to $25 trillion someday.
