Tesla (TSLA) shared a video of its Optimus humanoid robot (Gen 2) on Elon Musk’s social media platform X (Twitter) earlier this week. The footage shows a Tesla robot autonomously taking a walk on steep grounds hiking and coming down.
At the start of this test, Optimus looked like struggling with the walk but the terrain is difficult for a humanoid robot learning to tackle a different terrain in open space.
“Optimus can now walk on highly variable ground using neural nets to control its electric limbs,” Tesla CEO Elon Musk commented on the video as he reposted it on his own X timeline.
Before Tesla released the above video, the company always showed the Optimus robot walking in indoor settings like its factories and at the We, Robot event inside the Warner Bros. Studios.
It’s the first time Tesla has shown Optimus walking on more difficult grounds compared to a mostly flat factory floor. At first, the outside walk of Optimus looks a bit weird — but it’s still learning. To sense the environment around it, the robot uses the Tesla neural net same as Autopilot FSD.
A Tesla enthusiast cut the clip of the moment when Optimus almost took a tumble down the slope but recovered gracefully and regained its balance (watch below). This recovery from the mere fall resembles that of a human.
One of the engineers on the Tesla Optimus team commented on this video. Milan Kovac revealed that in this specific test, Optimus was blind. The ground was mulched and he said that he had slipped here before. So, a human would also slip and lose balance on this difficult ground.
Recovering to a balanced position from the slip on the slope without proper vision is an amazing feat. Milan explained the situation in an X post with technical details and also teased upcoming features of the Optimus robot as:
Tesla is where real-world AI is happening. These runs are on mulched ground, where I’ve myself slipped before. What’s really crazy here is that for these, Optimus is actually blind! Keeping its balance without video (yet), only other on-board sensors consumed by a neural net running in ~2-3ms on its embedded computer.
More exciting work happening on:
- adding Vision so it can better plan ahead
- making the gait look more natural on such rough terrain
- making it more responsive to velocity/direction commands
- learning how to fall to minimize damage when unavoidable (and stand back up)
Tesla is constantly adding features and capabilities to its humanoid robot. Just last month, the technology company showed Optimus catching tennis balls with a new generation of its hand.
Tesla is expanding its Optimus robot development team right now. If you are interested in such an ambitious AI and robotics project, you can apply for a job on the company’s official careers page here.
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