Optimus Robot Folding Shirt: Latest from Tesla

The Quirky Tesla head, Elon Musk, has released a fascinating video through his personal Reader Wall’s social media space. The video reveals Tesla’s Optimus robot, demonstrating how expertly it can fold a t-shirt. The robot handles the shirt smoothly, displaying an almost humanoid quality. However, as the video gained considerable online attention, Elon Musk informed his followers that the robot isn’t capable of completing the task independently yet.

Autonomous Functioning of Robot Still Underway

Musk captioned the video as “Optimus folds a shirt”, which gained a lot of traction. However, he speedily clarified the robot’s limits in a follow-up post. Ensuring transparency, he stated, “Note: Optimus isn’t able to do this autonomously yet. However, with some progress, it will soon be capable of such tasks in any given environment and won’t necessarily need a fixed table or a basket that holds only one shirt.”

Following the release of the video on Tuesday, the clip has already secured over 68 million views on our Reader Wall’s source. A notable tech commentator even questioned the video’s authenticity by asking Musk if the clip was real or computer-generated. Looking closely, some observant viewers detected that the robot might be remotely operated rather than work on autonomous algorithms as a gloved hand seemed visible in the video.

Viewer Reactions on the Video

The viewers got talking after seeing the video. The Optimus’ movements were matched by what appeared to be a shadow hand. One viewer said, “Can you explain the shadowy hand on the video’s right bottom? It seems controlling Optimus’ movements.” Another viewer brought attention to the same detail and said, “‘Hand’ glimpsed on the bottom right at the screen edge seems to synchronize the movements.”

Among the comments, some were humorous takes on the video, for instance, “If my mom were here, she would have snatched the t-shirt from the robot, saying it’s too slow.” Another stated that “it’s quite appreciable, but it seems like somebody in a bodysuit is controlling the movements and not the robot’s neural nets.”

About Tesla’s Optimus Robot

Of particular note, Tesla’s Optimus robot forms a significant part of the AI and robotics division at Tesla. Tesla advocates an AI-first approach. According to Tesla, inference hardware is indispensable for creating entirely self-driving, bipedal robots. The robot on display is the latest version after its predecessor, Optimus Gen 1. The new robot, Optimus Gen 2, was introduced after Optimus Gen 1, which was launched in March 2022.