Boston Dynamics’ new video shows Atlas carrying tools, planks at ‘construction site’

In the new video from Boston Dynamics, Atlas interacts with various objects at a simulated construction site. It grasps, carries and tosses tool bags. It clubs stairs, jumps between different levels and even pushes a large wooden block that was in its way before it does an impressive inverted 540-degree flip that engineers at the company are calling “Sick Trick.”

At a glimpse, this video may seem to be a lot less impressive than previous Boston Dynamics videos, which showed robots engaging in cool tricks, parkour and coordinated dance routines. While making a robot do a backflip is an impressive task by itself, the manipulation tasks that Atlas performed in the new video requires it to have a nuanced understanding of its environment.

According to Boston Dynamics, during the video in which Atlas danced to the song “Do You Love Me?”, the robot was entirely blind without any environmental perception. But in its parkour video, Atlas perceived and moved around or over obstacles that were fixed.

But for the new video, not only did the robot have to detect, grip and move objects of different sizes, materials, and weights, but it also had to stay balanced while carrying these objects through the environment.

“Parkour forces us to understand the physical limitations of the robot, and dance forces us to think about how precise and dexterous the whole-body motion can be. Now, manipulation is forcing us to take that information and interpret it in terms of how we can get the hands to do something specific. What’s important about the Atlas project is that we don’t let go of any of those other things we’ve learned,” said Robin Deits, a software engineer on the Atlas controls team, in a press statement.

It’s time for Atlas to pick up a new set of skills and get hands on. pic.twitter.com/osOWiiBlSh

— Boston Dynamics (@BostonDynamics) January 18, 2023

Even the simplest of movements that humans might take for granted are extremely complicated for a robot to make. For example, when Atlas manipulates a large wooden plank at the beginning of the video, it performs a jump where it turns 180 degrees in the air. This means that the robot’s systems need to account for the plank’s momentum and weight to ensure that it doesn’t tip over.

While some Boston Dynamics robots, like “robodog” Spot and robotic arm Stretch, are commercial products available for sale, Atlas is purely a research platform, according to the company.

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