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In a brand new video posted at this time, Boston Dynamics is sending off its hydraulic Atlas humanoid robotic. “For nearly a decade,” the video description reads, “Atlas has sparked our creativeness, impressed the subsequent generations of roboticists, and leapt over technical boundaries within the area. Now it’s time for our hydraulic Atlas robotic to relax and calm down.”
Hydraulic Atlas has definitely earned some rest; Boston Dynamics has been completely cruel with its humanoid analysis program. This isn’t a criticism—typically being cruel to your {hardware} is important to push the envelope of what’s attainable. And as spectators, we simply simply get to take pleasure in it, and this spotlight reel consists of unseen footage of Atlas doing issues nicely together with unseen footage of Atlas doing issues not so nicely. Which, let’s be sincere, is what we’re all actually right here for.
There’s a lot extra to the historical past of Atlas than this video reveals. Atlas traces its historical past again to a DARPA challenge known as PETMAN (Safety Ensemble Take a look at Model), which we first wrote about in 2009, so way back that we needed to dig up our personal article on the Wayback Machine. As contributor Mikell Taylor wrote again then:
PETMAN is designed to check the fits utilized by troopers to guard themselves in opposition to chemical warfare brokers. It needs to be able to transferring identical to a soldier—strolling, operating, bending, reaching, military crawling—to check the swimsuit’s sturdiness in a full vary of movement. To essentially simulate people as precisely as attainable, PETMAN will even be capable to “sweat”.
Relative to the opposite humanoid robots on the market on the time (probably the most well-known of which, by far, was Honda’s ASIMO), PETMAN’s motion and steadiness have been very, very spectacular. Additionally spectacular was the presumably unintentional approach during which this PETMAN video synced up with the music video to Stayin’ Alive by the Bee Gees. Anyway, DARPA was suitably impressed by all this impressiveness, and selected Boston Dynamics to construct one other humanoid robotic for use for the DARPA Robotics Problem. That robotic was unveiled ten years in the past.
The DRC featured a [still looking for a collective noun for humanoid robots] of Atlases, and it appeared like Boston Dynamics was hooked on the shape issue, as a result of lower than a yr after the DRC Finals the corporate introduced the subsequent era of Atlas, which may do some helpful issues like transfer bins round. Each six months or so, Boston Dynamics put out a brand new Atlas video, with the robotic operating or leaping or dancing or doing parkour, leveraging its highly effective hydraulics to impress us each single time. There was actually nothing like hydraulic Atlas by way of dynamic efficiency, and you possibly can argue that there nonetheless isn’t. This can be a robotic that can be missed.
The unique rendering of Atlas, adopted by 4 generations of the robotic.Boston Dynamics/IEEE Spectrum
Now, for those who’re questioning why Boston Dynamics is saying “it’s time for our hydraulic Atlas robotic to relax and calm down,” slightly than simply “our Atlas robotic,” and for those who’re additionally questioning why the video description ends with “have a look again at every little thing we’ve completed with the Atlas platform “to this point,” nicely, I can’t make it easier to. Some folks would possibly try to attract some inferences and conclusions from that very particular and deliberate language, however I would definitely not be one among them, as a result of I’m well-known for by no means speculating about something.
I might, nevertheless, level out a couple of issues which were apparent for some time now. Particularly, that:
Boston Dynamics has been focusing pretty explicitly on commercialization over the previous a number of yearsComplex hydraulic robots will not be product pleasant as a result of (amongst different issues) they have a tendency to depart puddles of hydraulic fluid on the carpetBoston Dynamics has been very profitable with Spot as a productized electrical platform primarily based on earlier hydraulic analysis platformsFully electrical business humanoids actually appears to be the place robotics is at proper nowThere’s nothing in any respect new in any of this; the one extra piece of knowledge we now have is that the hydraulic Atlas is, as of at this time, retiring. And I’m simply going to depart issues there.
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