Do you remember when Tesla announced its autonomous robot last year and it turned out to be a skinny man in a spandex suit gyrating to EDM? I do, so I was a bit surprised that this year's robot reveal managed to show off an actual robot. Tesla has unveiled a prototype of its Optimus humanoid robot, a robot that could have as big an impact on the world as that daft Tesla tunnel underneath Las Vegas.
It's safe to say I'm not Tesla's biggest fan, although I did laugh at the Cybertruck launch when Elon Musk threw a rock through the supposedly bulletproof glass. But it's not just me. Actual robot experts were far from thrilled by the Tesla terminator. As the Associated Press reports (opens in new tab), AI researcher Filip Piekniewski described it as "next level cringeworthy" and a "complete and utter scam"; robotics expert Cynthia Yeung tweeted that "none of this is cutting edge" and urged Tesla to "hire some PhDs and go to some robotics conferences".
The consensus among AI and robotics experts appears to be that Tesla is over-promising and is going to under-deliver. Which sounds awfully familiar.
Why I'd rather have a Roomba
According to Elon Musk, the price of the Optimus could be less than $20,000 / £20,000, and you'll be able to buy one in three to five years. Experts aren't convinced, not least because the only thing Optimus was able to do in the demo was to walk slowly and wave. The demonstrations of it moving things around were on video, not live.
And Musk has a tendency to promise things he can't deliver, such as the fleet of a million robot taxis that'd be on the road by the end of 2020 (there are currently zero; the promised date is now 2024) or the fully autonomous, super-safe, self-driving Teslas he's been promising since 2015.
As TechCrunch (opens in new tab) pointed out, the robot reveal was part of an event primarily designed to recruit new Tesla staff – and "what Tesla showed with its robot on stage at the event was a very brief demo that barely matched and definitely didn’t exceed a large number of humanoid robot demonstrations from other companies over the years, including most famously Boston Dynamics."
Right now, the Optimus robot is less useful than a Roomba – and cynical me suspects that's going to be the case for a long time yet.
