This past weekend, me and over 1,300 other curious humans met Tesla’s Optimus as it made its UK debut. For those that don’t know, Optimus is Tesla’s humanoid robot that it’s still cooking up. Yes, the electric car lot. The vision is that it might one day take out the bins and sort the laundry. Think Rosie from the Jetsons.
Right now, Optimus is a bit of a hybrid between Iron Man and a puppet show. It does some things autonomously, others via human remote control. But watching it move, interact, and dish out popcorn, it’s clear to me that humanoid robots are on the way, and they’re starting to do real things.
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This isn’t just another gadget that cleans your floors while getting stuck under the sofa. Optimus hints at a future where we don’t need a separate robot for each task. No more shelling out for a robo-vac, robo-mower, robo-whatever. You get one smart robot who can eventually do the lot. Need help with dinner, the laundry, or lifting boxes in the garage? Same bot.
There’s an impressive amount of tech packed into the robot. Optimus stands at 173cm tall and weighs 57kg, which puts it roughly in the range of a tall-ish teenager. It comes with 28 degrees of freedom in its hands for delicate tasks – such as dishing out popcorn –to the masses plus full-body real-time vision. It uses cameras to move around and interact with others, thanks to the same AI Tesla uses in its cars.
Optimus can handle uneven terrain, interact with people, and improve itself via over-the-air updates. At Tesla’s Fremont Factory, it’s already doing real work like sorting battery cells and moving materials. Production is pegged for next year, with units trickling out to the public in late 2026 or early 2027. Tesla’s aiming for a price between $20000 and $25000. Not exactly pocket change, but cheaper than a year of childcare. I’m joking. It is, perhaps, cheaper than a fleet of other household robots and smart devices.
Don’t get me wrong, Optimus has a fair way to go. But after interacting with one, I’m convinced humanoid robots might be the start of something genuinely new and exciting. Judging by the crowd gathered to meet it, I’m clearly not the only one who thinks so.
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