April 23 (Reuters) - Tesla's humanoid robot is

still in the lab, but it may be ready to sell as soon as the end

of next year, chief executive Elon Musk said on Tuesday.

Several companies have been betting on humanoid robots to

meet potential labor shortages and perform repetitive tasks that

could be dangerous or tedious in industries such as logistics,

warehousing, retail and manufacturing.

Musk told investors on a conference call that he guessed the

Tesla robot, called Optimus, would be able to perform tasks in

the factory by the end of this year.

Humanoid robots have been in development for several years

by Japan's Honda ( HMC ) and Hyundai Motor's ( HYMTF ) Boston Dynamics.

This year, Microsoft ( MSFT ) and Nvidia ( NVDA )-backed startup Figure said

it had signed a partnership with German automaker BMW to deploy

humanoid robots in the car maker's facility in the United

States.

Billionaire Musk has said before that robot sales could

become a larger part of the Tesla business than other segments,

including car manufacturing.

"I think Tesla is best positioned of any humanoid robot

maker to be able to reach volume production with efficient

inference on the robot itself," Musk said on the Tuesday call,

referring to the artificial intelligence abilities.

Musk has a history of failing to fulfill bold promises to

Wall Street. In 2019, he told investors that Tesla would be

operating a network of "robotaxi" autonomous cars by 2020.

Tesla put out the first generation of its Optimus robot,

dubbed Bumblebee, in September 2022. This year, the company

posted a video of a second generation of the bipedal robot

folding a T-shirt at the firm's facility.

Figure's video released in February of its 01 robot shows it

making coffee, while Boston Dynamics last week unveiled an

electric platform for its Atlas humanoid robot, which was seen

twisting and turning from a lying down state to standing and

walking.