Experts judgment on the much-hyped Tesla Bot: Elon Musk speedruns robotics 101

Elon Musk has finally unveiled a prototype of the much-hyped Optimus robot — a bipedal machine that the Tesla CEO imagines will one day be sold as a “general purpose” bot that’s cheaper than a car and equally capable of working in factories and doing chores at home.

The presentation of Optimus at Tesla’s AI Day was laced with the usual Musk intoxicants of hype and misdirection. But it also offered roboticists an admirably detailed look at some of the machine’s actual capabilities. Their judgment? That Tesla’s engineers have done incredible work in such a short space of time but that Optimus is still more hype than reality: a research robot that will take many years to develop into anything meaningful.

Before we dive into the experts’...

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