Boston Dynamics has provided robotic enthusiasts a sneak peek of the workshop where it works on the advanced Atlas robot. A new video shows the robotics team highlights Atlas’s skill set that allows it to move similar to humans.
The video also shows the team working on the humanoid robot Atlas as they make it more efficient by adding new features. The Atlas team’s main focus is parkour, a training regime that involves an obstacle course.
Every mishap makes way for improvement
No, they don’t want to make the robot fit, but it’s a task made to push the company’s bipedal robot to its boundaries and conquer different challenges. Besides, there are many trips and tumbles along the way but every mishap helps the engineers to improve the skills of the robot.
“Robots crash a lot, it’s not the robot just magically deciding to do parkour,” Boston Dynamics’ Benjamin Stephens explains in the video. “It’s kind of a choreographed routine, much like a skateboard video or a parkour video where an athlete has practiced these moves dozens or hundreds of times to get to that exciting capability, so we’re kind of doing the same thing with Atlas, exploring how to push it to its limits.”
“As an Atlas team we’re encouraged to push that platform to its limits, like do the most crazy, exciting, high-powered stuff we can do with it, and so we’re always expanding and pushing the limits of Atlas’s capabilities, then hopefully by extension, extending the capabilities of the company as well,” Stephen adds.
Bright future of automatons
Besides, students at Oregon State University have created a bipedal robot that uses machine learning and teaches itself to run a 5K racecourse. The robot named Cassie ran 5 km of gravel, sidewalk, and fields to finish a course on a single charge in 53 minutes.
The robot is capable of using two human-like legs to keep a steady but varied pace across different terrains. It could be a step towards a future filled with automatons helping humans with several tasks, the school said.
