The company that brought you Spot the robotic construction dog has now leaped forward in a new video showing Atlas the humanoid bringing tools to a worker on a scaffold.
The two-legged Atlas is a research project by Boston Dynamics, designed to give a robot humanlike – and even, superhuman – maneuverability.
In the video below, Atlas fetches a 17-pound tool bag for a worker on a scaffold and performs some impressive acrobatics and feats along the way. The company says Atlas, which has been shown in previous videos performing parkour and dancing, can now “lift, carry and throw larger, heavier objects than ever before.”
Boston Dynamics uses “model predictive control” for Atlas’ operation. With it, models of the robot’s dynamics predict how it will move and then it makes adjustments. The model “searches over possible actions it can take now and in the near future to best achieve the set task,” the company says. Depth sensors generate point clouds to detect its surroundings.
The new Atlas video demonstrates the company’s ability to expand model predictive control to more complex tasks. The model now considers “the motion of every joint in the robot, the momentum of every link in the robot and the forces the robot applies on an object that it is carrying or throwing.”
