A Tesla Senior Staff Software Engineer has confirmed that the remarkable new demonstration of Optimus’s new hand was teleoperated. The new demonstration stunned many in social media, partly due to the dexterity and smoothness of Optimus’ hand movements.
The demonstration was posted by the official Tesla Optimus account on social media platform X. The video was short, and it was simply caption as “Got a new hand for Black Friday.” The contents of the clip were astounding, however, as it showed Optimus catching two tennis balls using its upgraded hand.
In a follow-up post on X, Tesla Senior Staff Software Engineer Julian Ibarz noted that catching a ball with Optimus’ previous hand was almost impossible. He also mentioned that Optimus’ hand in the recently-posted video features a great form factor. Most importantly, Ibarz confirmed that the Optimus unit in the video was teleoperated.
And i forgot to mention, but this is tele-operated.
— Julian Ibarz (@julianibarz) November 28, 2024
“Our new hand is much closer to a human hand capability. It’s even faster and has much more degrees of freedom which will allow us to do many more tasks such as catching a ball which was almost impossible with the previous hand. The form factor is great too, so many motors that fit in such a slim forearm. And i forgot to mention, but this is tele-operated,” Ibarz wrote in his post on X.
The upgrades to Optimus’ hands have been teased by Tesla for some time, with CEO Elon Musk stating back in May that the humanoid robot’s new hand will feature 22 degrees of freedom. That’s quite remarkable for a humanoid robot, especially considering that human hands have 27 degrees of freedom.
Forgot to add this video of the newer version of the Optimus hand pic.twitter.com/PWd7g59Lhh
— Dirty Tesla (@DirtyTesLa) October 11, 2024
Tesla would later showcase Optimus’ upgraded hand at the “We, Robot” event in October, though it was not installed on an Optimus robot. Instead, it was mounted as a display for the event’s attendees. Even then, however, it was already plain to see just how dexterous Optimus’ new hands would be with 22 degrees freedom.
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