Boston Dynamics has made huge progress in robotics. Its robot, Atlas, can do many things that most robots struggle to accomplish.
Atlas Shows Off New Impressive Tasks for Construction
Atlas, a humanoid robot from Boston Dynamics, is equipped with impressive agility and dexterity. The company released a new video that showed off Atlas' new features, Engadget reported.
In the clip, Atlas is in a construction site. The robot can be seen grabbing and placing a wooden plank across a large gap. He also heads over to pick up the tool bag itself, climbs the stairs, balances itself across the plank, hops a couple of edges and jumps spinning in place.
Atlas is also smart enough to avoid tilting itself over the side before dismounting with an impressive 540-degree flip that the project engineers called a "sick trick."
According to Robin Deits, a software engineer on the Atlas controls team, dances force them to think about how precise and dexterous the whole-body motion of Atlas can be. He added that parkour forces them to understand the physical limitations of the robot.
Also, manipulation forces them to take the information and interpret them to make it do specific things. For the Atlas project, Diets said they keep the previous things they have learned as they continue to explore for more discovery.
What Makes Atlas Different
None of the things Atlas did was easy. In the early 2000s, bipedal robots were so weak that they would collapse when they looked sideways, let alone ascend a flight of stairs.
In 2015, robots were still in such a primitive state that there were supercuts of them tripping over themselves. However, today, they made tremendous progress based on Atlas' performance.
The robot can now outrun, outjump and outclimb the typical sedentary American - at least Boston Dynamics' robots are like Atlas!
However, despite Atlas' gopher skills, you shouldn't expect it to replace the neighborhood UPS driver any time soon (for one, their union would never allow it) because the creation of this video required a significant investment of time and effort.
As shown in behind the scenes, Atlas took more than a few spills while learning its new routine, which resulted in the robot receiving dents, scrapes, and scratches.
More About Atlas
Based on Boston Dynamic's website, Atlas is designed to push the limits of whole-body mobility, so one can expect it to walk, jump, run and do more.
The sophisticated control system and cutting-edge hardware that Atlas is equipped with give it the power and balance it needs to perform at the same level of agility as humans.
Atlas possesses one of the most space-efficient mobile hydraulic systems in the world. It can deliver high power to any of its 28 hydraulic joints, allowing it to perform impressive feats of mobility, thanks to its custom battery, valves, and compact hydraulic power unit.
It is also equipped with a highly advanced control system to be highly diverse and agile in locomotion. Its algorithms reason through complex dynamic interactions involving the whole body and environment to plan movements.
While Atlas is packed with a powerful control system and impressive features that most robots struggle to achieve, it is lightweight. It uses 3D-printed parts that give it a strength-to-weight ratio to enable it to leap and do somersaults. Atlas only weighs 89 kilograms and stands 1.5 meters.
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