Tesla Optimus Robot Shows Skills at Folding Laundry During Pre-Scripted Demo

Tesla's humanoid robot called Optimus has a new achievement by showing off its skill of folding a t-shirt in a development facility, as seen in Elon Musk's post on X.

Musk also clarified that Optimus cannot do the task autonomously but hopes that the robot will be able to do more in the future in an arbitrary environment.

Tesla Optimus Robot Shares New Progress

In 2022, Optimus was first introduced to the public as the Tesla Bot. However, the demo at the Tesla AI Day that year failed to impress the public.

The early prototype of Optimus was not promising but the project has come a long way as the company announced last year that the robot is starting to gain credibility. Since September 2023, the robot has been trained with neural nets which enabled it to perform tasks autonomously.

As of December 2023, Tesla introduced Optimus Gen 2 as the refined humanoid robot of the previous prototype which is the same robot featured on the t-shirt folding video.

"Optimus cannot yet do this autonomously, but certainly will be able to do this fully autonomously and in an arbitrary environment (won't require a fixed table with box that has only one shirt)," Musk wrote.

Tesla Might Use Optimus for Internal Operations First

Many users were quick to critique the video of Optimus, citing that companies are prone to show off one skill or scenario on demos to highlight a development, while in reality not much else has been done.

Still, when compared to human speed, Optimus' folding rate is evidently slower and takes more time. One of the lead engineers of the project, Milan Kovac, shared that the team is targeting to make Optimus capable of handling more complex tasks.

For now, it seems that Optimus will be primed to help with Tesla's tasks and operations before being offered to the public. Also, this only confirmed that Optimus will be showing off more improved skills in the future.