Tesla’s Optimus robot is going through expanding pains

Hitting its goal of making 20,000 Optimus robots per week is reportedly proving tricky for Tesla. The Information reports that Tesla produced “several hundred robots a week” final month, following it repurposed its Model S and Model X manufacturing lines for Optimus before this year. However, this scheme is reportedly creating manufacturing snags, akin issues lining up parts precisely, as The Information notes: “Not lone are the Optimus manufacturing lines new, but the Optimus parts are much smaller and have to fit together far additional exactly than car parts.”

It reports that equal in the “V3” Optimus robots it’s currently producing, the hands and forearms “have additional than 100 screws and another small components that currently necessitate a employee to collect manually.” These robots are lighter and have additional cameras than former versions, but deficiency a “sensing glove” currently in betterment that volition enhance durability by making it easier to substitute contact sensors without swapping out the complete hand.

Optimus has faced delays for years now, equal as Tesla CEO Elon Musk has made bold promises concerning it, saying Optimus volition be Tesla’s “biggest merchandise of all time.” However, at the instant they’re motionless being used internally for particular tasks in constricted areas, and not mostly or alongside distant teleoperation. Tesla additionally reportedly plans to lease the robots initially fairly than marketing them, and use the training data collected to enhance the robots, but it volition have to get them out in the earth first.

Meanwhile, another developers have begun shifting to less lifelike designs for their robots, and before this month, Chinese regulators reportedly started holding rear IPO listings for humanoid robotics companies.