Optimus

Milan Kovac, VP overseeing Tesla's Optimus humanoid robot program, is reportedly leaving the company. His departure comes as Elon Musk targets 'thousands' of Optimus units in factories this year. Ashok Elluswamy, VP of AI software (Autopilot), is expected to take over leadership of the Optimus project.

Chris Walti, former head of Tesla's Optimus project, expresses doubts about the utility of humanoid robots in factories, arguing their form factor is ill-suited for repetitive industrial tasks. His new company, Mytra, focuses on a different approach to warehouse automation.

Two Financial Times articles highlight a fascinating dynamic: while a robotics giant questions the humanoid form, other reports detail the very problem—mentally taxing "connector" jobs—that bipedal robots aim to solve.

UC Berkeley researchers unveil VideoMimic, a novel system enabling humanoid robots to learn context-aware skills like stair climbing and sitting from ordinary videos, offering a new path for robot training and drawing comparisons to efforts by Tesla and NVIDIA.

Tesla showcases new Optimus capabilities, claiming its humanoid robot can now learn complex tasks from human video demonstrations, aiming to accelerate skill acquisition. This comes as the field of robotic reinforcement learning sees rapid advancements from multiple players.