Over the years we’ve documented Boston Dynamics incremental steps in either (a) creating a future life of leisure for humanity via robot helpers or (b) ensured our future enslavement/doom at the hands of robot overlords.
In the last year, we’ve seen their backflipping robots and door-opening dog-bots, and now today the cutting-edge robotics company has released video showing the next step – or is that leap – in the evolution of its humanoid ‘Atlas’ robot: it’s ability to navigate a stepped platform on the run using parkour-like agility.
It actually looks a little weird to the eye – I considered for a moment that it might be CG – but I think that is just a function of the difference between what a biological organism can achieve vs a machine (e.g. sensory processing is much faster, so reaction/stabilisation based on that feedback would occur much faster).
