Tesla Optimus controversy explained as humanoid robot takes a tumble

Tesla's robot has recently gone viral for all the wrong reasons.

A new video from last weekend shows how Optimus fell to the ground after losing its balance during a “Autonomy Visualized” event at a Tesla store in Miami.

In the clip, the robot seemingly tries to grab one of the bottles of water from the table in front, but instead knocks over a number of them and then proceeds to fall backwards, crashing to the floor.

Something social media users have pointed out is that the robot's arms move up toward its head as the chaos ensues, suggesting that in that moment, the robot was being teleoperated rather than carrying out the tasks autonomously and that it was copying a remote operator frantically removing a VR headset, given the way its hands move up to its face before falling back.

For context, humanoid robots are still under development, and so teleoperation is commonly used in this circumstance, which highlights the gap between robot hardware and the software needed for robots to carry out actions individually.

The video has been making the rounds online, as people have been reacting to Optimus' tumble.

One person said, "If there was any question that Optimus uses teleop for their robots. Here one clearly has a guy take the headset off and it falls over. Absolutely hilarious though."

"Me too Optimus. Me too," a second person joked.

A third person added, "This is pretty convincing evidence that Optimus robots are being teleoperated at least in some demos / environments."

The 'Optimus' humanoid robot has previously been seen in action at Tesla’s Cybercab event last year (which was later revealed to be under remote control by humans) and then earlier this year at the Tesla Diner in Los Angeles, where they were serving drinks and popcorn as well as entertaining customers.

Musk recently said that Optimus demonstrations did not involve remote control, saying that a video of the robot performing kung-fu was “AI, not tele-operated."

Tesla boss Elon Musk shared his belief that the Optimus humanoid robot business has big earning potential, predicting it will be worth "north of $10 trillion in revenue."

Meanwhile, delivering 1 million humanoid robots is one of Musk's objectives he has to achieve to secure his $1 trillion pay package from his tech company.

Elsewhere from Indy100, Musk humiliated by Grok as he shares video of Tesla robot dancing, and Elon Musk's new robot demo has the internet talking - and it's not good.

Indy100 has reached out to Tesla for comment.

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