It’s amazing.
https://techcrunch.com/2024/04/17/boston-dynamics-atlas-humanoid-robot-goes-electric
The following is a brief summary:
Atlas lay motionless prone on the interlocking exercise mat. The only soundtrack is the whir of an electric motor. It’s not quiet to be exact, but it’s nothing compared to the hydraulic shocks of its ancestors.
As the camera pans over the robot’s back, its legs bend at the knees. At first, it’s a natural action, and then it moves into incredible territory, like scenes in Sam Remy’s movies. The robot appears to be lying on its back, but it effectively converts position through this clever rotation of its legs.
When Atlas is fully standing, it faces its back to the camera. Now the head rotates about 180 degrees, and then the trunk rotates with it. It stood for a moment, allowing the camera to clearly see its head for the first time-a ring light forming the perimeter of a perfectly circular screen. As Atlas left the camera and walked out of the frame, the torso again followed the 180-degree rotation of the head.
A day after retiring its hydraulic version of the humanoid robot, Boston Dynamics has just announced-like Bob Dylan before it-that Atlas has just switched to electric.
The speed is fast, but the pace is still a little shaky-albeit much smoother than many of the new commercial humanoid robots we have introduced in the past few years. If anything, the gait is reminiscent of the arrogant confidence of Atlas’s cousin Spot, whose branch on the evolutionary tree branched out from the humanoid creature several generations ago.
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