Atlas lies motionless in a prone position on interlocking gym mats. The only soundtrack is the hum of an electric motor. It’s not exactly silent, but it’s nothing compared to the hydraulic jolts of its ancestors.
As the camera pans over the robot’s back, its legs bend at the knees. It’s a natural move, at first, before crossing into a strange realm, like something out of a Sam Raimi movie. The robot, which appeared to be lying on its back, has effectively changed position with this clever leg rotation.
When Atlas is fully standing, he does so with his back to the camera. Now the head rotates 180 degrees, before the torso does the same. He stands still for a moment, giving the camera its first clear view of his head: a ring of light forming the perimeter of a perfectly round screen. Once again, his torso follows the 180 degrees of the head, as Atlas moves away from the camera and out of the frame.
A day after retiring the hydraulic version of its humanoid robot, Boston Dynamics just announced that, like Bob Dylan before it, Atlas went electric.
The pace is fast, the steps still a little choppy, though significantly more fluid than many of the new commercial humanoids we’ve been introduced to in recent years. If anything, the gait recalls the brash confidence of Spot, Atlas’s cousin whose branch of the evolutionary tree split off from the humanoid a few generations ago.
All new Atlas
The new version of the robot is practically unrecognizable. Gone were the heavy torso, bowed legs, and silver armor. There are no exposed wires anywhere on the sleek new mechanical skeleton. The company, which has avoided reactionary complaints about the robopocalypse for decades, has opted for a kinder, gentler design than the original Atlas and more contemporary robots like the Figure 01 and Tesla Optimus.
The aesthetic of the new robot is more similar to that of Agility’s Digit and Apptronik’s Phoenix. The traffic light-headed robot has a softer, more cartoony design. It’s the “All New Atlas,” according to the video. Boston Dynamics has bucked its own trend by keeping the research name on a product it will position for commercialization. SpotMini became Spot. The handle became elastic. For now, however, Atlas is still Atlas.
“We might revisit this when we’re actually ready to build and deliver in quantity,” Boston Dynamics CEO Robert Playter tells TechCrunch. “But I think it’s worth keeping the brand for now.”
The executive’s statement reveals the still early stages of the project. Boston Dynamics’ current schedule has the electric Atlas beginning pilot testing at Hyundai facilities early next year, with full production within a few years.
“We are going to carry out experiments with Hyundai on site starting next year,” says Playter. “We already have Hyundai teams on site. We’ve been working on this for a while. For this to be successful, you need to have a lot more than cool technology. You really have to understand that use case, you have to have enough productivity to make it worth investing in a robot.”
doing a 180
Image credits: Boston Dynamics
The most surprising thing about the 40-second “All New Atlas” trailer is the robot’s movements. They are a reminder that building a humanoid robot does not require making it as human as possible. As one investor pointed out to me years ago, billions of years of evolution have not turned us humans into perfect machines. If we are going to create machines in our own image, why not build machines that can do things we can’t?
“We built a set of custom actuators, high-powered and very flexible at most joints,” Playter says. “That’s a huge range of motion. “That really packs the power of an elite athlete into this small package, and we’ve used that package throughout the robot.”
One thing worth keeping in mind when looking at the images is that Boston Dynamics has made a name for itself through decades of viral videos. Recent additions to the canon will most likely show a robot’s dance moves as something actually useful in an industrial setting. For that reason, it’s difficult to disentangle what the company considers real functionality and what is just a bit of boasting.
Starting in a prone position, for example, is an opportunity to show off that cool upside-down crab legs trick, but it’s also practical. As Boston Dynamics was more than happy to show in the Hydraulic Atlas farewell video, falling down is part of the job, and so is getting up. The truth of the matter is that most of the current crop of industrial robots require human intervention when they fail. On the other hand, a robot that can simply dust itself off and get back to work is a huge productivity win.
The system’s ability to operate in the blink of an eye also contributes significantly to its productivity potential. It reminds me of Agility’s Digit demos (the company is notably the only one of its kind with demo systems at this scale), in which a robot walks to a shelf, turns around, walks to the conveyor belt, turns turn and come back. Multiply that work by hundreds (or even thousands) of times a day and you’ll start to see the value in saving precious seconds.
“He will be able to perform a series of movements that people cannot do,” explains Playter. “There will be very practical uses for that.”
It is also important to significantly reduce the robot’s turning radius in tight spaces. Remember, these machines are intended to be abandoned solutions, that is, they are designed to plug into existing workflows in existing spaces. Ultimately, greater maneuverability could mean the difference between working in an environment and having to redo the design.
head and hands
Image credits: Boston Dynamics
The hands are not new to the video, having previously appeared in the hydraulic model. However, they also represent the company’s decision not to rely exclusively on human design as a guiding force. Here, the difference is as simple as opting for three fingers, instead of four, on the end effectors.
“There’s a lot of complexity in a hand,” Playter says. “When you take on the world with actuators, you have to be prepared for reliability and robustness. So we designed them with less than five fingers to try to control their complexity. We continue to explore generations of them. We want a compliant grip, adapting to a variety of shapes with a rich onboard feel, so you understand when you’re in contact.
Internally, the most controversial aspect of the design may well be the head. The large round display has screens reminiscent of a magnifying mirror.
“It was one of the design elements we were quite concerned about,” Playter says. “Everyone else had some sort of humanoid shape. I wanted it to be different. We want you to be friendly and open. Provides a palette for a display. Of course, there are sensors buried there, but also the shape is really meant to indicate some friendliness. “That will be important for interacting with these things in the future.”
An Atlas for Christmas
Image credits: Boston Dynamics
The landscape has changed dramatically in the decade since the introduction of the hydraulic Atlas. Electric Atlas has plenty of company, in the form of humanoid robots from Figure, Apptronik, Tesla and 1X, among others.
“For us, there has obviously been a huge influx of interest. I believe that this influx has been motivated by three events. Boston Dynamics was acquired [by Hyundai] for almost a billion dollars. That woke everyone up and they said, ‘Wow, there’s a way out.’ Tesla expresses interest in making validated things that we have been doing for a long time. And then the emergence of AI as a tool to help address mainstreaming is making all of this feasible. We were patient in announcing this because we wanted to do enough research to understand that we can solve handling problems and have confidence in a new generation of machines.
Despite Boston Dynamics’ big lead in humanoids, Playter says the company built the first build of the new robot around Christmas 2023. Before that, it was solving many of the simulation’s most complex problems.
Apparently this week the company is finally ready to start showing off what the robot can do, or at least the early stages of what it’s planning with the system.
general intelligence
One thing you can definitely say about Elon Musk is that he makes big promises. In Optimus’s early public days, when Tesla’s robot appeared to be little more than a spandex-clad human, the executive talked about a system that could do it all. His Optimus could work all day at the factory, do the shopping, and then make him dinner. That’s the dream, right?
The truth of the matter, of course, is built around small steps. Robotics companies may already be talking about “general-purpose humanoids,” but their systems are scaling one task at a time. For most, that means moving payloads from point A to point B. However, truly utilizing the form factor will require more generalized intelligence.
It seems like the app store model might present the clearest path there. After all, developer access has been a big part of the growth of Spot’s feature set. Playter, however, says Boston Dynamics won’t take that approach with Atlas.
“We are definitely going to focus on an application ourselves and not on building a platform,” he says. Our experience is that the way to go fast is to focus on an application and solve problems, and not assume that someone else will solve them for us. I think AI is an essential piece here. To support the generality of tasks, AI techniques will be needed and reinforced.”
The company recently opened access to Spot’s reinforcement learning algorithm for developers. That work will be critical to Atlas’ growing skill set.
Outside the Box
To be successful, Playter explains, humanoids have to go beyond the boxes.
“I think you can do that with many other robots,” he says. “Humanoids must be able to perform an enormous variety of tasks. You have two hands. You want to be able to pick up complex, heavy geometric shapes that a simple box picker couldn’t pick up, and you have to make hundreds of thousands of them. I think the single-task robot is a thing of the past. “Stretch is one of the latest applications where you can have a robot just moving boxes and make it work.”
If they are not boxes, what will be the task of the new Atlas at the Hyundai fair? The answer can be found in a video published by the company. in Februaryin which the hydraulic version of the robot was seen interacting with the car’s struts, the Hyundai components Playter alluded to earlier.
“Our long history in dynamic mobility means we are strong and know how to accommodate a heavy payload and still maintain tremendous mobility,” he says. “I think that will be a differentiator for us: being able to capture heavy, complex and massive things. That prop in the video probably weighs 25 pounds. Picking up wheels: We’ll be releasing a video later as part of this whole effort that shows a little more of the real-world object manipulation tasks we’ve been doing with Atlas. “I’m sure we know how to do that part and I haven’t seen others do it yet.”
