Elon Musk's Tesla humanoid Optimus robots weren't fully autonomous, humans piloted them

At Tesla's Cybercab event last week, the company made headlines for not only its new vehicles, but it's humanoid robots that were roaming around the event interacting with the public.

Numerous videos of the robots interacting with guests in various ways have begun circulating online, with some impressive footage showing Tesla's Optimus robots serving drinks, answering questions, dancing, and playing games. Footage of these Optimus robots responding to guests was particularly impressive as the response time was almost identical to that between two humans conversing.

Typically, when verbally interacting with a voice-activated device, there is a noticeable gap of time between the question being asked and the answer, as the device needs time to process the request, generate its response, and then speak it. However, Optimus's responses were near-perfect timing-wise. However, there was a reason for that as each of the Optimus robots were being remotely operated by humans who were responding to questions asked to them by guests via headsets.

For those sighing in disappointment and immediately thinking this was a covert marketing strategy by Tesla - it wasn't as the human operators were open with guests about the remote assistance they were providing the robots, but from the perspective of the robot. "Today, I am assisted by a human," one Optimus robot told an attendee. It appears Tesla wasn't putting a major effort into trying to hoodwink the public into thinking these robots were fully autonomous, but due to the lack of upfront transparency, many might walk away thinking they were.