Tesla's plan to put a can-do-anything-for-you humanoid on the market still looks a long way off. Why it matters: CEO Elon Musk said last week at the company's "We, Robot" event that the Tesla Optimus humanoid "will be the biggest product ever of any kind.

Musk first announced Tesla’s humanoid robot by bringing what was very clearly a person in a robot suit on stage, so it’s no surprise that the Optimuses (Optimi? Optimodes?) at

Tesla's main announcement coming from the company's recent "We, Robot" event was the Robotax i (or the CyberCab, we're still not sure about the name). But perhaps the biggest impression was made by Tesla's updated Optimus robots, which freely walked among the crowd, talked to guests, served drinks, played games, and danced.

During Tesla’s “We, Robot” event last week, which TechCrunch covered late into the night, sources on the ground sent me a handful of videos of the

Tesla used humans to remotely control some capabilities of its Optimus robot prototypes at a recent event, according to people familiar with the matter.

One of the highlights of Tesla’s “We, Robot” event wasn’t the self-driving cars but the allegedly autonomous robots. Tesla’s Optimus bot isn’t new, but this is the first event where actual robots joined the stage—and the crowd—rather than a person in a robot costume. Or was it?

Tesla's Optimus Robots were remotely operated by humans at the Cybercab event, but they will likely become fully autonomous machines soon.