Millions of humanoid robots, those that look and move like humans, could become regular fixtures in factories and homes, bringing down manufacturing costs, eliminating dreary and dangerous work, and launching humanity into an age of abundance, according to the CEOs of Tesla and Figure AI. Both companies have humanoid prototypes that look amazingly lifelike and are trained using artificial intelligence.
Here’s a head-to-head comparison of these humanoid robots and if the humanoid bot can prove to be a game-changer for Tesla in the future:
Optimus’ Edge
Optimus is currently working on Tesla’s manufacturing lines, Elon Musk noted in Tesla's (NASDAQ:TSLA) Q2 earnings conference call:
“[We] expect to have several thousand Optimus robots produced and doing useful things by the end of next year in Tesla factories.” In 2026, production will be ramped up “quite a bit,” and an updated version of Optimus will be sold to outside customers.
Tesla uses what it has learned from training its autonomous cars and from manufacturing electric vehicles (EVs) in the training and manufacturing of Optimus. It can work out any kinks that Optimus has while the robot works in Tesla’s factories.
The auto arm of Tesla should benefit from Optimus as well. If successfully deployed, the robot presumably would bring the company’s labor costs down sharply, allowing it to sell its EVs at lower prices than competitors’ cars produced using human labor.
Musk believes the long-term value of Optimus will exceed that of all of Tesla’s other parts. Optimus will be able to do “pretty much anything you ask of it. I think everyone on earth is going to want one.” Long-term retail and commercial demand for general-purpose humanoid robots could exceed 20 billion units, he estimates.
Adcock’s vision
Brett Adcock, CEO of Figure AI, has a plan. The company has built 10 humanoid robots, and it’s building one additional robot a week. A planned production line in California should produce hundreds of robots next year; shortly thereafter, thousands of robots will be manufactured annually.
At first, robots will be used in factories, filling vacant jobs, and doing work that isn’t desirable or dangerous, Adcock said in an August 22 podcast. Within the next three years, humanoid robots will also work in homes, doing chores, running errands, and even walking the dog.
Figure AI’s humanoids won’t be on the battlefield because the company doesn’t do defense-related work, he said. He believes there’s plenty of opportunity in the civilian market, where he forecasts 3 billion to 5 billion robots will be in the workforce by 2040. At some point, Adcock believes, everyone will own a humanoid.
As manufacturing ramps up, the cost of producing a humanoid robot should fall below $20,000. And ultimately, when robots build robots in factories powered by renewable energy, the price tag should fall much further. Adcock also envisions owners generating income by leasing or renting their robots to others when they’re not in use.
Companies will buy humanoid robots because they can be added to manufacturing lines without changing the layout of the factory floor or bringing in additional new equipment. Powered by artificial intelligence, humanoid robots will be trained easily through verbal commands or physical demonstration. And as one robot gets trained, its “knowledge” can be instantly shared with a fleet of robots. At first, humanoid robots will work in areas separated from humans. But within this decade, they’ll be working alongside humans.
Comparing Humanoids
The exteriors of Figure 2.0 and Optimus seem very similar, and both are being updated so rapidly that anything one robot lacks today, it likely won’t in its next iteration.
Both robots are roughly the same size: Optimus is five foot eight inches tall and 161 pounds, while Figure 2.0 is five foot six inches tall and 154 pounds, and both can carry roughly 45 pounds maximum. Both robots have human-like hands with five “fingers” but different ranges of freedom (16 degrees for Figure 2.0, 11 for Optimus). An expected upgrade will give Optimus’ hands 22 degrees of freedom. In a video, Figure 2.0 was shown handing a human an apple, and in another video, Optimus delicately handled an egg.
Other differences between the two include the number of cameras (six for Figure 2.0, four for Optimus) and power of battery packs (2.25 kWh and five hours runtime for Figure 2.0, 2.3 kWh and eight hours for Optimus).
It can also respond to human voice commands. Either Figure 2.0, which uses OpenAI software, is ahead of Optimus on this score or Optimus hasn’t shown what it’s capable of yet. Tesla kept Optimus under wraps in a clear container during the 2024 World Robot Conference in China earlier this month. Hopefully, we’ll see Optimus’s latest tricks after its upgrade later this year.