Optimus locomotion progress in 2.5 years

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the first version walks just like I do when I wake up with a hangover.

HANDS, the problem is HANDS. We can easily make the robots walk around, or even run around on wheels and some adaptation to stairs. A robot that runs around but can’t do anything is useless. The key to a robot work force is dexterous hands that can hold human tools Tesla is advanced because Optimus has working hands, rather than balls or claws. But I am worried they aren’t showcasing the hand progress.

I don't agree, why do we want robot to use human tools? If they are going to work in a factory, let's replace their hands with the tools that they are actually going to use.

The whole point is drop in replacement for humans. Not yet to hold tools but the objects. For example, robot folding cloth

Drop-in replacement should be pretty niche. Limiting robots to human level efficiency doesn't make sense. I'd much rather have a modular system where robots can change hand attachments to be more efficient than humans.

Drop-in is where we start because all of our infrastructure is designed for us. We get the biggest gains quickly if they can work in our environment. When they reach the point where they are entirely taking over a job, then they can be customized to have more efficient tools. This is a pragmatic approach that is necessary for adoption.

It’s 2040 and you’re shopping for a robotic helper. One has advanced humanoid hands. You take it home, turn it on, and it can do anything you can do with the same stuff you already have in your house. The other sells additional attachments for specific tasks. Want it to cook breakfast? Great! There’s an omelet attachment, a fried egg attachment, a scrambled egg attachment, a pancake attachment, and a waffle attachment. Buy only what you need *(at an additional cost). There are also attachments available to pour juice and another to make coffee. If you’d like it to clean up after you, there’s an attachment for that and a new dishwasher available that it can interface with (they run a Black Friday sale that includes installation, if you also buy the dish washing attachment). Want it to clean your car? Cool! There’s a hose attachment, a vacuum attachment, a window washing attachment, and a drying attachment. Yard work? They sell a lawnmower it can interface with, as well as a hedge trimmer attachment, an edging attachment, and a mulching add on. Want to walk the dog? It has a leash attachment and a new pooper-scooper add on (your neighbors will marvel as it switches attachments on the side of the road). Etc, etc… The second option is more expensive in the long run, requires that you buy new appliances and tools, is slower at completing tasks overall because it needs to change attachments so often… but, once those attachments are on, it’s slightly more efficient than a human at that specific task. Which are you choosing?

That's a lot of kinetic energy. I wonder what safeguards they'll put in place

They have limited a lot of their showcasing because competitors use videos of their factories and product pipeline as reference

It's not pragmatic, it's a waste of productivity. There are already millions of robots in assembly lines already. And they are specialized for their jobs. Because that's the best way to maximize ROI.

A robot to help you at home is probably the only use case where having a fully humanoid robot can make sense. But the robot revolution will not happen there, but on the shop floor. And on the shop floor there is no reason to have legs instead of wheels, and having 5 fingers is also probably dumb, except for very niche use cases.

Robots designed for factor production are one thing but there are millions of jobs that humans are doing that a generalized robot can take over rather than having to design specialty robots for each job. Remember that a single humanoid robot could do many different things in a human environment. Specialized robots might be better at specific jobs but no one is going to want to have a dozen robots when one can do all the jobs.

>Drop-in replacement should be pretty niche. Limiting robots to human level efficiency doesn't make sense. Then why give it legs and biped locomotion that is so complicated? Drop-in replacement has been 100% the whole argument for why they are built the way they are. If you're going to have special tools for them you have defeated the purpose of this form.

Tesla and most other companies are building general purposes Robots that are expected to take care of the sick, elderly and work in mixed environments.

sure thing bud

No it isn't. You can't just read the latest partially sourced article based on what Elon said and agree that's the problem. Optimus allegedly has problems with battery life, having hands that have both dexterity and load capacity, overheating joints. That's based on Tesla's feedback to suppliers, leaked to multiple journalists. That said, Anybody looking at the rate of improvement in a) Optimus and b) FSD in the last 2.5 years would be a little silly to declare how overvalued Tesla is. You don't need dexterous hands to put 4 Optimuses in a Robovan and take over most delivery services, regardless of hand dexterity.

It’s 125lbs. It has the kinetic energy of a teenager.

I always thought it walks like it has shit in its pants.

The 2025 clip is less than two seconds showing it move 20 feet. That’s not enough information.

Humans are **really** good at not bumping into stuff. Robots are orders of magnitude less.

Well, FSD is no where remotely close to being able to run unsupervised, and it hasn’t gotten measurably better in the last 2.5 years. I have FSD on my car, and it’s definitely gotten incrementally better over the years, but at the current rate of improvement, we are about 50 years away from it being about to *actually* be safe unsupervised. It’s currently about the equivalent of letting a drunk 10 year old drive (at least on city streets). It’s better on the freeway, but I’d say it’s about as good as a kid that just got their license. …this is after ~10 years on the market. Unless something monumental changes as far as increasing the rate of improvement, it won’t be *actually* FSD in our lifetime.

I wouldn't count on any LIDAR

Strap a creeper mask, set it in a dark tunnel. No hands necessary

I think they should keep the creepy walk. 6 of them coming at ya in a dark alley!

Still think humanoids are dumb. The robotics goes in the appliances so they can all work at the same time. A $30k android can't vacuum the house while mowing the yard. A Roomba and a robomower can do it for around $1000.

would be funny to have a hidden legacy mode to make future commercial versions walk like the stick-up-the-ass prototypes

You might just be reiterating his point.

Unbiased perspective but I use fsd everyday for a very long commute through the city and highway, and I don’t intervene once. Only time I intervene is if I get inpatient and want to switch lanes faster but that’s just a me problem

Never encountered a school bus, eh?

Its not just the hands problem, it's the whole nervous system problem. Optimus is going to have a hell of a time feeling around in the dark. You just know they are going to try and solve that using infrared cameras too, it's not gonna work. Optimus needs as many sensors as humans have nerve endings, that's the only way humanoid robots can work.

Well, I mean over time the humanoidal robots will probably become cheaper and more capable. They might come down in price where you can buy multiple to do different tasks at once as well. And once their done with one task, you could have them do something completely different in a different space. That's only if they can become cheaper and much better at autonomy though.

What’s the purpose of these though

They’ve talked about not showing the hands on purpose yet so competitors don’t steal their designs yet.

Show it doing laundry

Yet it's Waymo [being investigated for their behaviour around school busses](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/oct/20/waymo-robotaxi-investigation-safety-nhtsa).

Yes applying the right amount of force and sensing the feedback is something we do easily but it will be a bit harder for robot. Teaching it on different types of objects and telling how much force to apply is probably the only way to do it.

Which version are you using, which gen hardware? 14.2.1 is getting very close to being safe enough to go unsupervised, particularly in well mapped areas. It handles driving in the snow, is generally safer than the average driver, and from my experiences and from watching videos of others in general driving conditions it looks ready to go. It has some more minor niggles like with navigation routing choices at times, it's not yet smart enough at the destination or navigating out of larger car parks, and it needs to read signs - but those are all things thought to be in the works for release in the not too distant future. If you have a slightly older car with HW3 and an older version of the software then your experience will have been more stagnant. That doesn't mean it's not progressing on more recent cars with the latest hardware. That you think there hasn't been any progress in the last 2.5 years when they've completely shifted architecture suggests you're still using an older version either because you're on older hardware or your not in the US.

A Roomba can't move the dining chairs to hoover under the table, take the rug outside to beat it, reach every corner, put your dishes in the dishwasher, put your laundry in the washing machine, etc. The Robomower can't cut the edges next to the flowerbeds, pick up dog poop before running over a spot, collect up the leaves, or do the weeding. Androids like this aren't to replace the automations we already use to augment human power, they to replace the areas where humans are still needed to do a complete job. It's likely those that eventually buy an Optimus will still have a Roomba and a robomower. The Optimus will complement those solutions to give a more complete solution where those simpler automations have gaps in their capability.

Oh my god it’s a kitchenaid

We are working on it

"Hasn't gotten measurably better" is that a joke? https://teslafsdtracker.com/ Version 14 jumped to 9k miles between critical disengagements. That means the average fsd user has never had a critical disengagement in the time since fsd 14 came out.

Ooohhh, I love me a good whataboutism fallacy.

> Optimus needs as many sensors as humans have nerve endings, that's the only way humanoid robots can work. No, it doesn't. A great deal of those that we have are required because we're fragile sacks of living cells. Optimus doesn't need to take care of a skin that can be scratched, be attacked by parasites, or such things. Nor does it need to protect its tasty flesh against predators, find food, determine if a plant is edible, and flush its digestive system when it detects an infection. It doesn't need to care about environmental temperatures and humidity, nor about the temperature of surfaces it touches, although a couple of simple sensors for that would be useful---but still, we have those by the ten-thousands as part of our skin. And then, those special skin areas where we have the highest concentration of nerve endings even though we hide them away under clothing, ... it simply doesn't have those.

That's all good and fine but to do actual useful work that humans do everyday, it sometimes needs to be able to feel for things it can't see. If my Optimus is up on a ladder running wire in a drop ceiling, it needs to feel the ladder underneath it which is not in view, and feel around in the dark in the ceiling without damaging anything that's already up there. This will require a full robot nervous system. This is just one example for a trades type job

As opposed to unsourced unbacked up criticism? The original claim was that FSD is "nowhere remotely close to unsupervised", with claims of it not making any progress in the last 2.5 years, which is objectively false, with the user I replied to claiming that school busses were a specific problem without providing any source to back that up. Pointing out that another company who are already driving unsupervised have an officially recognised problem with school busses is now "whataboutism"?

Asking for a source on Tesla's FSD having issues with school buses would be appropriate. Pointing out a competitor's flaw is a distraction from the issue at hand, AKA a whataboutism fallacy.

works fine in my experience but idk if there is some general problem with busses

I have a 2024 MY (love it, btw) with FSD, and it simply will not stop for school buses. Like, at all. It doesn’t recognize the flashing lights and extended sign; it’ll just attempt to pass it.

FSD in my 2024 MY just ignores school buses. If one is in the opposing lane with lights flashing and sign extended, it will just happily continue on its way with no sign that it recognizes it.

If that were the only point being debated I would agree with you, but it's not. There's the wider context of whether that means Tesla are nowhere near being able to drive unsupervised and whether or not they've made any progress in the last 2.5 years. The point of bringing up Waymo was to show that another car that runs unsupervised still has similar issues. Regardless, this seems like something that Tesla will specifically train the car to handle in the next couple of releases if it really is a widespread issue. It's not a huge showstopper that means they're years from achieving unsupervised FSD.

huh. guess it depends. ive never experienced that oddly enough

Might?

I can get an off brand roomba for under $100 that can get the job done. If we could just add a robotic arm to a roomba to move small stuff and have a couple of devices that tie storage and cleaning together, we wouldn't need humanoid robots for anything

What about Optimus driving a school bus? Or crossing guard?

Lights arent complicated.

When I do work that's useless and never going to be utilized in any meaningful way by society I like to think of it as art. Is that what we do with these? Call it art? Just wondering how the people who are tirelessly building these things have to justify wasting this much money and time on a product no one asked for or needs. It's cool, it seems like art... maybe if it eventually helps paraplegic people if the future with mech suits?  But like dang I can't help but think there are so many bigger problems in today's world, if these minds could have been used to help those causes instead of spend years building these....

Ever heard the phrase "There no sense in reinventing the wheel?" Humans dont need reinventing. Sounds like roombas, dishwashers, and similar devices with gaps in their capability do though. Seems like all those tasks you mentioned could just as easily have been designed for those devices instead of creating a thing that already exists: people. Where people are broken is what science should address. Not making better, people out of machines... but making people better. These machines will become obsolete before they even become mainstream... so why pour all this energy and money into them to begin with?

And yet we've reinvented the wheel countless times over the years. Do you use a wooden cart wheel on your car? Humans do need reinventing as we have many characteristics that can be considered flaws depending on the context. We get tired. We have limited strength. We are expensive to pay. The time it takes us to mature and learn how to be productive is measured in decades. We are individual rather than repeatable. We have emotions and require highly controlled work environments. Our lives are not considered to have a monetary value that can be capitalised upon. Individual units are irreplaceable. Specialised machines for every single task take up more space than a single adaptable machine. And so on. Yet our world is built for and built around humans, making that form factor particularly useful for a machine navigating our world and carrying out tasks that may otherwise be carried out by a human. Perhaps you could design and build a specialist machine for every single thing I've listed. One machine rolls out to move furniture out of the way of a robot vacuum. Another rolls around collecting laundry from the floor and puts it in the washing machine. Except it cannot navigate stairs... so you have a machine that lifts other machines up and down the stairs. Then you have another machine that takes the washing out of the washing machine and hangs it on the washing line in the garden, but that requires navigating a step on the way out of the house and being able to reach high enough to hang the clothes. And then another machine is used to fold the clothes and yet another to hang them in the wardrobe... and then you need another machine to take dirty crockery and load the dishwasher, and again it needs to be tall enough to reach the top of the tables, but your kid left a plate upstairs so it also needs to fit on the robot that lifts other robots up the stairs, and.... ...can you honestly not see that a single humanoid robot that can do all those things, that can navigate and interact with our world, has utility and can be more efficient in terms of cost and space? And that's before you get into more advanced concepts like telepresence. Imagine, for example, being able to call an emergency electrician because of a power outage and instead of them having to come to your house they use a VR headset to instead take control of your Optimus and use it to carry out the work. Or for those that don't have such a robot, the plumber could instead own a few with self driving cars and send them out to jobs taking remote control of each in turn. Now the plumber doesn't need to travel and have all that dead time between paying jobs. There are millions of ways such robots will change our lives that no one has even thought of yet, so I'm afraid I will have to respectfully disagree with everything you said.

What version are you on? 14.2.1 with HW4 is perfect, would fully trust it without me even in the car.

But their 2025 holiday party [hit hard](https://www.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/s/fs3QGwEaY0). Maybe they need step drink max?

Amazon truck pulls into apartment complex or neighborhood. Six of these robots jump out, deliver packages to the door, run back to the truck... It just saved one person making (potentially) seven stops into one stop.. (driver plus six robots == 7) Saves on wear of the truck with the number of stop/go. Saves on human cost carrying large/heavy packages. The holiday UPS worker they hire to help carry boxes from the truck could be a robot. Carry heavy boxes, let the human stay in the warm truck! Midnight shelf stocking at big box stores. Robot fleet pulls out heavy lift, pulls it to the floor and starts to stock shelves. At first it may take time to be perfect but all of the back breaking bending over and lifting is offloaded to robots. Making the shelves look perfect will take some crazy upgrades code and speed adjustments... But possible! Many will complain about the job loss but anyone working these body breaking tasks for minimum wage are just killing their future with health issues, back pain, knee pain...

I'm not saying it doesn't need any (touch) sensors, I'm just saying that you're off by several orders of magnitude. And about your example: I'm pretty sure giving Optimus a clip-on wrist camera would make more sense and provide better results than giving it fully touch-sensitive skin on the whole hand instead of just on the contact surfaces of the fingers. And be cheaper by a lot, too.

This could be achieved with modified automated remote control cars. Why have a humanoid?

The possibilities are limitless. Think of everything humans do on a physical level, that what these will be able to do as well; except faster and better, without bitching or half-assing.

The human body is almost never the ideal form to achieve a task. We are really good at designing machines to do tasks, though.

It costs Amazon like 15 bucks to have that one person do the deliveries. How much do six Optimus robots cost

You forgot something here. The truck is self driving so there is no need for a delivery driver anymore.

Overall, the robots will be the better monetary value. The bots will probably be $10k eventually while a drivers annual salary will be $20k+.

Oh I 100% considered posting that but that is years out. The federal laws preventing it will take forever to fix. Near term, having a robot assistant is extremely possible. Worse case, the human is just a supervisor role to ensure the self driving is engaged and the robot returns to the truck without damage.

You aren't taking into account the cost of other benefits paid out by companies; health/dental insurance, 401k, etc.

Wheels have limitations.

While not ideal to perform specific tasks, it is rather ideal to perform a rather large spectrum of different tasks. Sure, some weird freaky spider/octopus design with multiple arms/hands would probably be more effective at multi-tasking; it would be rather off-putting the the majority of the population's psyche.

It’s cute you think Amazon delivery drivers get health / dental insurance or any benefits

According to the job postings on their website, and a simple Google search, they do.

Because the world has been designed for humanoids is the usual anwser.   Humanoids are not a bad form, very versatile.

There's a reason why when the invented industrial robots, they aren't mimicking Henry fords assembly line of workers from 1914. Humans are not really that great at doing everything. It's hilarious to see this concept of a tesla robot pushing a lawn mower, when we could just sell robot lawn mowers (which already exist). The idea that humanoid robots have this endless market is also wildly unproven.

Humans are also squishy - lots of built in bumpers

You don’t see the use case of a general purpose robot that can interact with the world like a human and use existing tools? Instead of having a laundry bot, a kitchen bot, a house cleaning bot, a lawn mowing bot, a dog walking bot, a gardening bot, a nursing bot, a package delivery bot, etc. you can just have a single humanoid robot. Sometimes it’s better not to reinvent hundreds of wheels.

Except that octopus spider bot *still* wouldn’t be better. We designed our world for humans. We didn’t design it around robots. Even if it’s not the optimal design for every use case, it’s the best design for the world we built.

So Elon can replace you obviously ha

The human operator finally got in shape good for him

"A $30k android can't vacuum the house while mowing the yard" You'll have to wait for one powered by a quantum computer for that...

The use case is irrelevant to the economics of it and the reality of it happening. A robot lawn mower can map the lawn area, detect any large objects and cut the grass at a constant rate. New ones are electric and just stop back into their dock to recharge. A humanoid robot has to be trained to get out a lawn mower, start the lawn mower, use the lawn mower in a normal way and be aware of surroundings, what is grass, how to refill the lawn mower with gas, what is a gas can, how to use a gas can. Etc. That is in no way easier. Then you extrapolate that to every single facet of just landscaping. As well, it depends how much it costs. Is the humanoid robot that can do that $200,000? It would be cheaper to hire a laundry service, landscaping, cleaning etc per month for the average person. The idea of Optimus being a real product with what Elon is claiming is possible is so comically unrealistic I can’t believe anyone would take it seriously.

Hear me out.... driver plus seven robots == 8

Some Roborock vacuums have tiny arms that love things out of the way.