Tesla’s humanoid robot is now 30% faster, 22 pounds lighter

Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and executive chair of X (formerly Twitter), has revealed a new prototype of Tesla’s humanoid robot, Optimus, which is lighter and faster than previous versions. Musk shared a video presentation of Optimus Gen 2 via his X account on Dec. 13.

According to the video, the new robot is 22 pounds lighter than Optimus Gen 1, while its foot construction replicates human anatomy, improving the machine’s balance and full-body control. Optimus Gen 2 does a few squats in the video to demonstrate.

The machine has tactile sensing on all fingers and can manipulate delicate objects, illustrated when it picks up an egg and then puts it back.

The first Optimus prototype from Tesla appeared in 2022. The original robot could barely walk forward, and its insides were visible. Another version needed assistance from the staff to remain upright. In the spring of 2023, Musk published a video of the next generation of Tesla-made bots walking relatively freely, retrieving objects from one container, and putting them into another.

Musk has repeatedly called for more regulatory oversight of artificial intelligence (AI), believing it may be “smarter than all humans at everything” in the future.

In December, the entrepreneur claimed that a “digital god” would make the copyright lawsuits regarding AI irrelevant. Musk previously predicted that artificial general intelligence would arrive before 2030, an estimate many industry experts disputed as overly optimistic.