Tesla’s humanoid robot announced in 2021 is called Optimus.
Tesla introduced the project as the Tesla Bot at its Artificial Intelligence Day event on August 19, 2021. The proposed machine was a general-purpose humanoid intended to handle dangerous, repetitive, or boring tasks, including work in industrial environments. Tesla said it could use related artificial-intelligence and hardware ideas developed for its driver-assistance systems.
The 2021 announcement did not include a fully functioning production robot. Instead, Tesla presented a person in a suit to outline the concept and promised a later prototype. At the company’s second AI Day in September 2022, Tesla showed early Optimus machines that could walk, move their arms, and perform limited demonstrations.
Optimus is often confused with ASIMO, Pepper, or Atlas, but those are robots developed by Honda, SoftBank Robotics, and Boston Dynamics respectively. The name also evokes Optimus Prime from the Transformers franchise. Tesla has continued to present successive versions, but development timelines and the degree of autonomous capability have remained subjects of debate.