Tech billionaire Elon Musk presents the latest prototype of a humanoid robot developed by Tesla electric car company.

On Friday, Tesla CEO Elon Musk showcased his much-hyped humanoid robot “Optimus” at the firm’s “AI Day” event. Musk showed off Optimus, a humanoid robot, at the event.

An attempt to expand beyond self-driving vehicles, which have yet to become a reality despite his frequent promises, the billionaire also wants to create a new robot company.

A prototype of the robot was seen on stage waving to the audience and a video of the robot watering plants and moving metal bars at Tesla’s factory was shown.

Tesla’s humanoid robot plan was announced by Musk at last year’s AI day. The event was delayed this year so that its robot prototype would be working, with production possibly starting next year.

According to Musk the robot was work-in-progress but could be on sale to the public in a few years and would be produced en masse, at a cost lower than $20,000 (£17,900), and be available in three to five years.

“Currently humanoid robots were “missing a brain”, saying they don’t have the intelligence to navigate the world by themselves, and they were also very expensive and made in low volume.”

“Our goal is to make a useful humanoid robot as quickly as possible,” Musk said at the event at a Tesla office in Palo Alto, California. “There’s still a lot of work to be done to refine Optimus and prove it.” says Musk

Many investors and financial analysts have advised Tesla to focus on projects related to electric cars rather than robotics, as sceptical that Tesla will turn to robotics. Mr Musk, however, wants to solve one of the most difficult artificial intelligence issues: how to make a machine that can replace a human.

Heni Ben Amor, a robotics professor at Arizona State University says Tesla posted an image of metallic robotic hands making a heart shape to tease the unveiling of the bot.

“Building human-like, versatile hands that can handle different objects, however, is extremely difficult.” says Amor.

Musk, who once warned of artificial intelligence being a threat to humanity, said that Tesla wanted to make sure the transition to a society in which robots did the work and people reaped the benefits was a safe one.”

“We always want to be careful we don’t go down the Terminator path,” he cautioned, referring to a blockbuster film about a killer cyborg.” said Musk