Tesla Pays $48 an Hour for Motion Capture to Develop Humanoid Robot

Tesla is offering up to $48 an hour to wear a motion-capture suit that collects data to be used in the development of the automaker’s humanoid robot, Optimus.

Applicants must stand between 5 feet, 7 inches and 5 feet, 10 inches tall and be capable of carrying up to 30 pounds and walking more than seven hours a day, the company said in a job listing.

Candidates must also be able to wear a virtual reality (VR) headset for extended periods, which can be disorienting and uncomfortable for some people and result in VR sickness, according to the post, which notes the position is located in Palo Alto, California.

As a data collection operator for the Tesla Bot, the employee’s duties include walking predetermined test routes, performing designated movements and actions, analyzing data and writing daily reports detailing their observations and issues that may arise. The position is one of more than 20 openings related to the Tesla Bot, most of which are in engineering.

The job posting comes as Tesla moves to commercialize the robot, which was unveiled at the company’s annual AI Day in 2022. It has since been deployed to handle batteries in one of the company’s factories, according to Tesla’s most recent earnings report.

In a post on X last month, CEO Elon Musk said the company would have “genuinely useful humanoid robots” for internal use in 2025 and, “hopefully,” production for other companies in 2026.

Related:Ex-Tesla Engineers Launch Robotics Startup to Automate Warehouse Logistics

To say Musk is bullish on the robot’s prospects is an understatement. During an April earnings call, the executive said a fully commercialized Optimus will be “more valuable than everything else combined” from the company’s production line.

“If you've got a sentient humanoid robot that is able to navigate reality and do tasks at request, there is no meaningful limit to the size of the economy,” Musk said. “So that's what's going to happen, and I think Tesla is best positioned of any humanoid robot maker to be able to reach volume production.”

The executive noted that Optimus benefits from superior AI inference, which is the process a machine uses to draw conclusions from new data. Optimus uses the same AI that Tesla’s vehicles use in their self-driving mode 

“Tesla's inference AI is vastly better than any other company,” Musk said. “There's no company even close to the inference efficiency of Tesla.”