Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, began its Tesla AI Day 2022 with a quick level set on expectations — “we’ve come a long way” — and then stepped aside to allow the first iteration of its robot to walk out onto the stage.
Unlike last year, the robot was not a human dressed in a robot costume. Instead, at its second annual event, Tesla unveiled a working robot, albeit one with exposed cables and a bit wobbly. It was the first time it had worked without “any support, cranes, mechanical mechanisms, or cables,” according to Musk. The robot left the stage after a brief turn around the stage before the rest of the presentation began, which included several short videos of the robot (now tethered for stability) carrying a box in an office, watering a plant, and lifting a small piece of metal in the Tesla factory in Fremont, California.