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The Optimus robots at Tesla’s Cybercab event were humans in disguise

DATE POSTED:October 13, 2024
A picture of an Optimus robot, wearing a cowboy hat and standing in front of a crowd of people, behind a table. An Optimus robot at the We, Robot event. | Screenshot: Tesla We, Robot livestream

Tesla made sure its Optimus robots were a big part of its extravagant, in-person Cybercab reveal last week. The robots mingled with the crowd, served drinks to and played games with guests, and danced inside a gazebo. Seemingly most surprisingly, they could even talk. But it was mostly just a show.

It’s obvious when you watch the videos from the event, of course. If Optimus really was a fully autonomous machine that could immediately react to verbal and visual cues while talking, one-on-one, to human beings in a dimly lit crowd, that would be mind-blowing.

Playing charades with the Tesla Optimus robot last night. This is either the single greatest robotics and LLM demo the world has ever seen, or it's MOSTLY remote operated by a...

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