https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbJ61sVuo2s Well, while we can’t comment on most of that, what we can say is the thing that was revealed Friday was—at the very least—not a person in a suit. The company actually showed off two iterations of its creation. The first was something dubbed Bumble C, a robot that actually walked—or, more accurately, staggered—around the stage and occasionally waved at the audience. Musk said that this version of the robot was a “rough development robot” that will eventually mature into what Optimus is meant to be. A video played during the event purported to show this prototype lifting a box and also trying to water a house plant. The second iteration was a supposedly more developed version of the robot, with additional hardware and plating. Ironically, this advanced version could not really walk at all. To the naked eye, it looked basically like a mannequin with a stick up its butt (the stick was to help keep its torso erect, I think). The thing drunkenly tottered around the stage, guided and supported by a chorus of worried Tesla staff, who looked at all times like they were terrified that it would face plant. Musk, to his credit, seemed to be having fun with the whole thing. “As you know, last year it was just a person in a robot suit but, uh, we’ve come a long away and compared to that it’s going to be very impressive,” he said, at the beginning of the evening. The rest of the night was taken up by presentations given by Tesla engineers, who explained much of the science behind the robot. All of this obviously inspires a lot of questions: For one thing, how long until it, like, works? Also, anybody want to hazard a guess as to how much worse of a robot Optimus is next to Xiaomi’s CyberOne? We would ask Tesla but the company dissolved its PR office two years ago. We have a feeling we’ll learn more soon enough, though. In fact, it’s a guarantee we’ll get some relevant Elon tweets before too long. Daily Newsletter