Namaste! Elon Musk posts photo of Tesla Humanoid doing yoga

Elon Musk on Monday showcased the Tesla humanoid robot called ‘Optimus’ who greeted his followers with a ‘Namaste’, while performing a couple of yoga postures comfortably. Showcased for the first time during Tesla AI Day 2022 in October last year, Optimus was seen performing simple tasks this time in a video posted by the X (formerly Twitter) owner. Optimus is now capable of self-calibrating its arms and legs. Using only vision and joint position encoders, the robot can precisely locate its limbs in space. It learns its tasks smoothly, like sorting and un-sorting coloured blocks, and its neural net runs entirely on-board, using only vision.

After a long day at work for the humanoid robot, “it is time to stretch”, ending with a Namaste, showed the video. The robot has the same artificial intelligence (AI) software and sensors present in Tesla’s advanced driver assistance system called ‘Autopilot’ and it may cost around $20,000 (roughly Rs 16,61,960). The humanoid robot is made for mass production in the “millions” of units. The robot contains a 2.3 kilowatt per hour battery pack which is “perfect for about a full day’s worth of work”, runs on a Tesla chip, and has Wi-Fi and LTE connectivity, reports The Verge.

The human-like hands are a “Biologically Inspired Design” that will make the robot suitable for picking up objects of various shapes and sizes at factories and other facilities. “It’ll be a fundamental transformation for civilisation as we know it,” Musk had said at the AI Day event. He said the robot could be priced “probably less than $20,000”, as his team moved a non-walking prototype offstage behind him. It will be able to carry a 20-pound bag, use tools and have a precision grip for small robots. It is also equipped with wireless connectivity as well as audio support and hardware-level security features.

— Written with inputs from IANS