Move along, move along… nothing to see here, nothing to see, evening all. That was pretty much the Tesla Bot. It was revealed during AI Day, Tesla’s expansive product insight into the future and now. Indeed the pre-hype of AI Day was primarily centered on Optimus, the name given to Tesla’s humanoid robot. Honestly, I was expecting a Boston Dynamics rivaling robot to walk on stage and break dance in front of an astonished audience.

Reality set in as Optimus was previewed in two prototype forms, first was a self-walking AI humanoid robot which was impressive but it is pretty much standard fare these days within the robotics industry. Then a second prototype, mounted on a stand, was wheeled out by three people, oh the irony. It looked ludicrous. This was not the terrifying humanoid robotic apocalypse of the future, the robot was unable to self-propel apart from waving its pre-programmed arms.

Elon Musk says that Tesla’s robot will be a game changer. On this evidence… not anytime soon. Optimus is about 10-15 years behind the real game changers, Boston Dynamics. Clearly, Optimus demonstrates that Tesla has a lot of work ahead of them if they are to make Optimus a useful tool for society instead of a useful idiot.

Nevertheless, Tesla Bot, AKA Optimus, is interesting in that Musk wants to mass-produce a consumer-friendly retail-ready Optimus for around $20,000 per unit.  Musk previously said that Optimus will be bigger than even the car. Right now it is slower than a Sloth.