During Tesla's AI 2022 event held in Silicon Valley on Friday, Elon Musk demonstrated the prototype for a humanoid robot called Optimus.
The robot — which Musk plans to make available commercially for under $20,000 — is still a work in progress, but could be ready for the public in "a few years."
After giving a little wave to the audience to kick off the demonstration, a video was shown of Optimus watering plants, carrying boxes and lifting metal bars to showcase some of the robot's capabilities.
When finalized, Musk plans to test the robots further by having them work jobs in Tesla car factories, according to company engineers.
"It'll be a fundamental transformation for civilization as we know it," Musk says.
As Forbes points out in their coverage of Tesla's AI 2022 event, work on the Optimus prototype has made considerable advancements since last year's event. In 2021, Optimus had not yet been given a formal name and was referred to only as "Tesla Bot." Whereas now there's an actual robot to present, attendees at last year's function were shown an actual person in a robot suit during the presentation.
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Compared to a human worker who uses "100W at rest and 500W when walking briskly," Optimus will be able to perform a full day run by a "2.3kWh Tesla battery pack and 52V subsystem," according to Tesla.
"Naturally, there will be a Catgirl version of our Optimus robot," Musk said on Twitter Friday.
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