Tesla Factory Engineer Injured In Robot Attack, Elon Musk Slams Media For 'Implying' Involvement Of Optimus

A software engineer working at a Tesla factory in the US was injured after he was attacked by a robot designed to move aluminum car parts. The robot attack, which took place two years ago, happened at Tesla's Giga Texas factory in Austin in US state of Texas. It came to light in a 2021 injury report.

Reacting to the incident, Elon Musk slammed the media and clarified that Tesla Bot or Optimus was not involved in the "attack". The engineer had received injuries on his left hand.

Tesla robot pins down engineer

The engineer was busy programming software for robots when he was attacked. While two robots were inactive, a third was operating. According to the report, the active robot pinned the techie and sank its metal claws on his back. There was a trail of blood on the factor floor following the incident, the report added.

The injured engineer was struggling to get out of the robot's claws when a fellow worker came to his rescue and hit "emergency stop" button. Except for this incident, no other robot-related injuries were reported at the Texas factory in 2021 or 2022 to the regulators.

Elon Musk's clarification

Elon Musk reacted to the report, saying that it was carrying misleading information. "Truly shameful of the media to dredge up an injury from two years ago due to a simple industrial Kuka robot arm (found in all factories) and imply that it is due to Optimus now," Musk wrote on X while replying to Andrew McCarthy.

McCarthy explained that the incident was not an "attack". "'Attacks' implies it made a decision. That robot did exactly as it was programmed to do. Apparently the worker thought it was off when it wasn’t," he posted.