Elon Musk doesn’t only run a series of futuristic companies, but their products could end up interacting in even more futuristic ways.
Elon Musk has outlined a future where two of his most ambitious projects, Neuralink and Tesla’s Optimus robot, could converge. The concept, straight out of science fiction, involves using Neuralink’s brain-computer interface (BCI) to allow a person to mentally inhabit and control one of Tesla’s humanoid robots, effectively creating a real-world avatar.
Musk envisions a future where the connection is seamless and total. “As we advance the Neuralink devices, you should be able to actually have full-body control and sensors from an Optimus robot,” he stated. This wouldn’t be a limited or partial interface, but a complete transfer of presence. “So you could basically inhabit an Optimus robot—not just the hand, the whole thing. You could mentally remote into an Optimus robot.” Summing up the extraordinary nature of the idea, he added, “The future’s gonna be weird, but pretty cool.”
Beyond the concept of robotic avatars, Musk detailed a more immediate and profound medical application for this technological fusion: advanced prosthetics for those who have lost limbs. He believes the same underlying principles can be used to restore not just function, but a semblance of the original limb, powered by the user’s own mind and integrated with advanced robotics.
“Obviously, another thing that could be done also is for people that have, say, lost a limb or lost an arm or a leg or something like that,” Musk elaborated. “We think in the future we’ll be able to attach an Optimus’s arm or legs.” He drew a direct parallel to a classic moment in cinematic history to illustrate the goal. “I remember that scene from Star Wars where Luke Skywalker gets his hand chopped off with the lightsaber and he gets a robot hand. I think that’s the kind of thing that we’ll be able to do in the future, working with Neuralink and Tesla.”
Both of these companies have made significant strides in recent years. Neuralink now has been implanted into several patients, and allows them to play computer games with their minds. The optimus series of robots are now capable of increasingly complex and sophisticated movements. In theory, it could be possible to attach the signals from a Neuralink implant in a brain to control an Optimus robot. Marrying these two streams of technology could revolutionise prosthetics, moving beyond mechanical replacements to neurally integrated limbs that feel and act as true extensions of the body. The journey is fraught with immense technological and societal challenges — what would be the legal status of these robots that are controlled by humans, for instance — but thanks to recent advances, the potential to embody robots is something that doesn’t seem all that far-fetched in 2025.