Elon Musk’s Tesla gets ready to unveil 'humanoid robots'

Elon Musk’s Tesla is ready to expand from fleets of electric cars and logistics to that of ‘humanoid robots’. The Texas-based company has said that it is looking to deploy thousands of robots, called Tesla Bot or Optimus, in its factories and elsewhere, as per a Reuters report.   

‘Humanoid robots’ have human characteristics, and these resemble humans in, both, behaviour and appearance. Humanoid robots have advantages like safe load carrying, great efficiency, high accuracy and accomplish working less time. Humanoid robots can be used for practical purposes including interacting with humans, experimental analysis, automation of production processes and other purposes.  

As per earlier reports, Tesla plans to unveil a prototype of Optimus at the company’s second year of ‘Tesla AI day’ on September 30, suggesting that it is hardly 10 more days to go for the world to see these ‘human robots’. 

On Tesla’s career page too, several job listings dedicated to the “humanoid bi-pedal robots” or Tesla Bot, indicating the company’ s penchant to expand beyond factory robots. The company for the first time hinted of these robots in August 2021 during the company’s first Tesla’s A.I. Day.

“Basically, if you think about what we’re doing right now with cars, Tesla is arguably the world’s biggest robotics company because our cars are like semi-sentient robots on wheels,” Musk said at the event a year ago.

As per Reuters, Tesla is facing scepticism from robotics experts, investors and analysts as Musk has made many promises that have failed to pan out. Also they believe that Musk needs to justify the expense of "general purpose" robots in factories, homes and elsewhere.  

Earlier in 2017, Musk made ambitious ‘promises’ to produce 200,000 Model 3s by the end of the year, which reportedly required producing 5,000 cars weekly, up from 3,500 at the time — a reason why Musk planned to achieve that by investing in robots and the idea of “the machine that builds the machine”. But that didn’t quite work out. Also in 2019, Musk promised 1 million robotaxis by 2020 but hasn’t yet delivered such a car.  

Nonetheless, Tesla already uses robots in its production process. Honda Motor Co and Hyundai Motor Co’s Boston Dynamics unit, have tried to build humanoid robots, but none have been commercialised.   

However, Nancy Cooke, a professor in human systems engineering at Arizona State University told Reuters, “To succeed, Tesla will need to show robots doing multiple, unscripted actions.”  

Such proof could provide a boost to Tesla stock, which is down 25% from its 2021 peak, she said, adding that if “he just gets the robot to walk around, or he gets the robots to dance, that's already been done. That’s not that impressive”.  

According to an August 2022 study conducted by analyst firm Research Dive, the global humanoid robot market forecast will be $9,630.0 million till 2026, at a CAGR of 36.4%, increasing from $803.7 million in 2018. The global market has been dominated by North America and is projected to account for $3,052.7 million in the end of 2026. Besides, Europe is expected to grow enormously and is projected to reach a revenue of $2,783.8 million by 2026.  

A separate report by SkyQuest research, Japan is Holding 54% of Asia Pacific humanoid robot market. 

By 2030, China’s humanoid robot market is projected to worth more than $2.5 billion, while Japan's humanoid robot industry is expected to generate revenue of more than $1.6 billion, according to a report.