Atlas the Robot Works Its Hydraulic Joints, Nails Parkour Demonstration

Boston Dynamics, which was recently acquired by Hyundai, is one of the largest robotics design companies out there, and is based in Massachusetts. It’s gained popularity with its beloved Spot robot, that yellow dog-like quadruped, which is now more than one year "old" and continues to be used for a variety of applications.

Unlike its brother Spot, Atlas was not designed for production purposes. It is a research humanoid robot that helps Boston Dynamics’ engineers expand the capabilities of their cutting-edge machines.

Atlas is 5-ft (1.5 meters) tall and weighs 165 pounds (75 kg). It is battery-powered, equipped with RGB cameras, depth sensors, and can move its feet by means of hydraulics.

In a recent YouTube post, Atlas gives an impressive parkour demonstration. Why parkour? Because, according to Boston Dynamics, this is a useful organizing activity for its team of engineers, which highlights important aspects and challenges that need to be addressed.

Parkour routines help the company come up with solutions to building high-power density mobile robots that are capable of extended athletic behaviors.

However, it is not all magic, because Atlas has had its share of falls and crashes, and it takes a lot of work to control its moves and make it go through the entire course. While we’re only seeing the impressive end result, there is an entire choreographed routine involved.

In fact, you can think of Atlas as if it were an athlete who’s practiced assiduously to get to a certain level of performance. Except that in this case, it was the Boston Dynamics engineers who pushed the limits of the robot and learned from its repeated failures. And their work was indeed rewarded because Atlas can now master parkour even better than some of its fellow humans.