A new humanoid robot demo just dropped — and the most impressive part is how boring it is. Following verbal, natural-language instructions, Tesla’s battery-powered Optimus can take out the trash, sweep up a mess, and even tear a single paper towel off the roll with eerily human precision.
Tesla engineer Milan Kovac said Tuesday, “One of our goals is to have Optimus learn straight from internet videos of humans doing tasks,” and that the company had recently had a “breakthrough” along those lines. He said that Optimus “can now transfer a big chunk of the learning directly from human videos to the bots.”
Impressive, sure — but Tesla still lags Boston Dynamics and Agility Robotics in sheer physical capability. That hasn’t stopped Tesla chief Elon Musk from declaring that Optimus will be “the biggest product of all time by far.”
If that seems a bit much, take a look at Optimus taking the drudgery out of life:
I’m not just dancing all day, ok pic.twitter.com/rKs5WwKjvf
— Tesla Optimus (@Tesla_Optimus) May 21, 2025
What would you have it do first?
True story.
A few weeks ago, I showed my wife another video of Optimus in action. Melissa had one question, and it came immediately: “How much does it cost?”
That seems to be a lot of people’s first reaction, if X is anything to go by.
Melissa had just one question. I, naturally, have several.
Can Optimus be trained to brush my fuzzy dogs? Change my oil? Clean the leaves out of the gutter?
“All I really need,” I joked last week on X, “is a Roomba that can do the stairs.” But who would say no to a robot that can vacuum those hard-to-reach places, fold laundry, do the dishes, and — unlike my teenage sons — only needs to be told once?
If Optimus can learn those things by watching YouTube videos, that would be great. But I’d pay extra for a robot that clears pine needles from the yard and then rewards me with a perfectly made martini, right out of the box.
There are other questions, too. Like: How do we avoid scenes like this one?
Footage claimed to show a Unitree H1 (Full-Size Universal Humanoid Robot) going berserk, nearly injuring two workers, after a coding error last week at a testing facility in China. pic.twitter.com/lBcw4tPEpb
— OSINTdefender (@sentdefender) May 4, 2025
Granted, this was not an AI robot becoming self-aware and deciding to kill its makers, à la Skynet. The guys who nearly got robo-flayed made a coding error and quickly hit the STOP button. But that still leaves the question of whether an Optimus-type robot is always one bad firmware update away from going rogue.
All of these questions, these dreams of a chore-free lifestyle, are encapsulated in my wife’s simple question: “How much does it cost?” I told my wife that Musk says he expects Optimus to cost between $20,000-$30,000, once Tesla can produce the bots “at scale.”
Once again, she responded immediately: “I’d give up a car for one.”
“Me, too,” I said. “Do you think we could call Waymo and send the robot to Home Depot with our shopping list?” Automated taxis taking robots shopping — presumably to use the self-checkout.
“These are the days of miracle and wonder,” indeed — or nearly so. Optimus isn’t expected to come to market until 2026 or ’27, and there’s no promise how long it might take Tesla to scale up production high enough to bring prices down for home use. “The most advanced humanoid robots currently on the market cost upward of $100,000,” tech site CCN reported last week.
For the foreseeable future, domestic robots are a bit like fusion power: perpetually five years away.
Another question: If Tesla manages to sell Optimus for $20-$30,000, how long before Chinese knockoffs undercut the entire industry? Do we need Trump tariffs to protect a young AI industry from a hostile rival? Or should people who can’t afford Optimus have the opportunity to buy an Optimus Knockoff?
Musk said last summer that he expects that “Tesla will have genuinely useful humanoid robots in low production for Tesla internal use next year and, hopefully, high production for other companies in 2026.” Although, like many of his timelines, that one seems a bit optimistic. But humanoid robots should prove to be just as multifunctional as human beings, and someday — sooner than you might believe — will replace the single- or limited-function industrial robots currently in use.
Then they’ll come for us… and our dishes.
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