Possible cause of the singularity Boston Dynamics is secretive about upcoming projects, but new footage shows their robots in action-and the results are highly unsettling.
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Although the humanoid bot can walk and toddle on its own, it’s not necessarily free-standing: the pipedal ‘droid is still connected to a large power chord, which engineers at Boston Dynamics hope to soon take out of the equation. The robot was designed to walk on uneven trial and outdoor environment.
Despite its gear, testing Atlas in a lab and Atlas in the great outdoors is more stressful than it can first seem. The team has set the aim to develop a robot which can match or surpass human functionality.
Raibert revealed the video and spoke about the research during a talk earlier this month at the 11th Fab Lab Conference and Symposium in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
The robot can get up on its own after a fall. Atlas has the capability to rotate its wrists, which helps the robot to open doorknobs easily.
He described the challenge of getting Atlas to move freely in the public domain as “totally different” to developing it in a laboratory and added: “You can’t predict what its going to be like”.
In a YouTube video that appeared in the past 24 hours, Atlas can be seen walking through the woods.
The robot is one of the most advanced ever created.
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“All kinds of stuff happens out there and we’re making pretty good progress on making it so it has mobility that’s sort of within shooting range of yours”, he said.
