Elon Musk Reveals Tesla's 'Optimus' AI Robot Can Fold Shirts For You

Elon Musk shares a variety of intriguing content on his X (formerly Twitter) account, ranging from memes about his own platform to updates on products his companies are developing.

And now, Elon Musk has posted a new video of Optimus, Tesla’s humanoid robot, folding shirts. The video shows the robot picking up a shirt from a basket and then folding it like a human would, all in a matter of seconds.

However, Musk, in a follow-up post, clarified that the robot cannot yet do this autonomously. Nevertheless, Musk added that it “will be able to do this fully autonomously and in an arbitrary environment (won’t require a fixed table with a box that has only one shirt).”

It’s worth noting that this isn’t the first time Musk has shown off Optimus’ skills. In September of last year, Musk posted a video of the humanoid robot performing a variety of tasks, including sorting coloured blocks by colour and even stretching its robotic limbs and doing yoga. And later in December, he showed Optimus Gen 2 boiling eggs.

At the time, Tesla noted that the robot can perform these movements and form these positions because it is now capable of self-calibrating its arms and legs.

This robot is part of Tesla’s AI and robotics division and uses an AI-first approach. The company says that, with the help of inference hardware, this is the only way to make fully self-driving, bipedal robots. Optimus Gen 2 is the newest Tesla robot, and it’s the successor to Optimus Gen 1, which was unveiled in March 2022.