It’s a shock video as a result of Atlas is unboxing and racking shocks – sorry about that. But it is also a shock as a result of Atlas has at all times been a humanoid robotics analysis platform, not a business product – and this new video has us questioning.
The work of constructing automobiles is ideal for robotic automation – massive volumes, heavy components, excessive potential for human harm, excessive precision and reliability necessities – and certainly, there are already a ton of job-specific robots concerned within the manufacturing and meeting traces.
But there are additionally nonetheless a number of jobs that look rather more random and disorganized – and that is the place humanoid robots search to step in. Obviously, that’ll be one of many early functions for Tesla’s Optimus robotic, and we have seen just lately that Figure is pursuing an analogous path with BMW.
We did not count on to see Atlas rolling up its sleeves on this type of work, and but right here we’re.
We’ve seen Atlas flirting with growing its worksite chops earlier than as a building-site dogsbody, throwing toolbags round and the like, however Boston Dynamics has in any other case left the real-world work conditions to its extra commercially targeted non-humanoids: Spot the robotic canine, and the weird rolling, balancing Stretch robotic.
But the sort of work it is doing within the video above – which we count on it is doing autonomously, though we will not but affirm – suits in very properly with the “decide issues up, transfer them round” early business use case that corporations like Figure imagine will result in multi-billion greenback income streams.
Ever since Korean auto big Hyundai purchased Boston Dynamics in 2020, we have questioned whether or not Atlas is likely to be headed in a extra business path. It’s clearly probably the most superior humanoid robotic ever constructed as issues stand. Its electrically powered, hydraulically-actuated joints give it the unequalled explosive energy that makes it such a gymnastic athlete, and in addition to dealing with a broad vary of chaotic and shifting terrains, it is also developed a sure form of grace to its motion that makes Optimus and the opposite newcomers appear to be they’re strolling round with full diapers.
Inside the Lab: Taking Atlas From Sim to Scaffold
This new video definitely provides gas to that fireside. But for all of the issues Atlas is, there’s one which it definitely is not. It’s not designed for streamlined mass manufacturing as a business product. It’s a rare testbed and has led the world for greater than a decade, but when Boston is basically going to get critical about placing humanoids to work at scale, we might count on to see one other design altogether – and possibly one which’s not almost as athletic.
Source: Boston Dynamics