The Tesla robot Optimus, while catching a tennis ball, was presented on Thursday by Elon Musk, republishing the relevant news of the company’s engineer Milan Kovacs. Although the robot works by remote control, its movement seems more human and than… human.

Kovacs’ post

“Our new hand/arm with twice the degrees of freedom now in action in the bot! There are 22 DoFs (Degrees of Freedom) in the hand and 3 in the wrist/arm.

This little video was made last night in the lab (by remote control) and is in real time. It gives us confidence that very soon we will be building all new bots with them.

Still a bit of work to finish before the end of the year, particularly on the extended tactile integration (much more surface coverage than the previous hand), the very thin controls via the ‘tendons’ and the ‘shaving’ of some weight off the forearm . All the activation has been transferred to the forearm, which has increased its weight.

Interesting challenge to have enough firmness/compliance and a protective layer on the fingers and palm without too much impact on the sense of touch.”