Boston dynamics, the most renowned robotics company owned by Google is now all set to work out with its prototype ATLAS, the humanoid. It actually takes the work as like the humans. This robot is well managed to survive in the extreme conditions. It is equipped to walk in snow, pick things that are much heavier and so on. We have found some interesting things about the Atlas which was shared by the founder of the Boston Dynamics, Mr. Marc Raibert with IEEE Spectrum and this is a quick overview about it,
Credits
Reference: IEEE Spectrum, Inverse.
Images: Google
Video: Youtube
- At 5’9” (1.75 m) and 180 lbs (82 kg), the new ATLAS is much shorter and lighter than the previous model, which was 6’2” (1.9 m) and 345 lbs (156 kg). See family photo above for comparison.
- It looks like BD decided that electric motors aren’t yet up to the task of getting a 180-pound robot to walk around, so they stuck with the more complicated (and generally messier) hydraulic system. Other legged robots do this too, and it seems like a reasonable compromise between the quiet efficiency of electricity and the power of hydraulics.
- That dynamic balancing reminds us a lot of the early BigDog videos, but it’s crazy to see it running in a biped like this, because of the speed at which the limbs have to move while still supporting the upper body.
- We’re not exactly sure how much autonomy it’s got going at this point. While walking outdoors, the LIDAR appears not to be spinning much of the time, which means someone is likely driving the robot. Some of the box lifting looks to be autonomous, but we’re definitely looking for some background on what’s going on behind the scenes when the robot is stacking boxes on those shelves.
- It can fall over, and not only not die, but get up again by itself. There were a few layers of mats underneath the robot, and one video doesn’t reveal a whole lot about its overall robustness, but this is miles better than any other humanoid robot short of CHIMP (if you want to call CHIMP a humanoid).
We hope that this project will lead us to the next generation of the andro-humanoid robots which can make us to set some new parameters in robotics.
We are putting up a small video of the upgraded version of the Atlas, doing some of the chores.
Credits
Reference: IEEE Spectrum, Inverse.
Images: Google
Video: Youtube
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