Boston Dynamics Atlas -Robot can make wagon wheels now The more fluid, dynamic features of the robots are possible thanks to Boston Dynamics Robotikis expertise and Nvidia’s models Atlas looks much more C-3PO now and moves much more like a human being
I get it, blue, the adorable robotic collaboration between NVIDIA, Google and Disney, Captivated Hearts, but I’ve seen something better and more practical from Boston Dynamics, based on many of the same NVIDIA -founding models. Furthermore, it is a better indicator for the next big step – or carriage wheels – in humanoid robotics.
Boston Dynamics was an early adopter of Nvidia’s project Groot, and now it has elaborated on the partnership by tapping several Nvidia platforms, including Jetson Thor Computing Platform and Isaac Lab, which uses Nvidia’s Isaac SIM and Omiversion Technologies to help drive his stunning, all-electric Atlas Humanoid Robot.
Jetson Thor is paired with Atlas’ body and manipulation controls to exploit Multimodal AIS, and the Isaac Lab frame is used to help the robot learn in virtual environments.
All of this helps with movement and adaptation to unforeseen or at least unexpected environments that can also improve the safety of a humanoid robot that one day can work with you.
It would be difficult to conceptualize the benefits of all the deep technology if it wasn’t for this video.
Walk, Run, Crawl, RL FUN | Boston Dynamics | Atlas – YouTube
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In the latest Atlas demonstration, the 6-foot high, 330 pounds of all-electric humanoidal robot crawl, runs, rolls, a can opener movement (ask your break-dance parents) and carriage wheels.
The series of movements was so shocking that I had to ask if the video had been accelerated to make everything look smoother. Representatives of Boston Dynamics confirmed that the video is running at normal speed.
When I watched the video and imagined all the virtual training needed to pull out the living movements, it found me that we have reached a rocker.
Go to side, c-3
Of course, the hydraulic atlas could do parkour and backflips, but it didn’t look like much like us. The electric atlas is another story. Its physiology is certainly human. The head is missing a real face, but it is clearly a head and the body conditions are all normal if they are slightly increased up to body builder size. Remember, it’s 330 pounds.
In other words, Atlas finally looks much more like C-3PO. Now there are a lot of new humanoid robots from Tesla (Optimus), Figure AI (Figure 01), X1 (Neo Gama) and Unitree (Unitree G1).
With the exception of G1, these robots are mobile disappointments. None of them move in truly fluent and compelling ways. Their steps have stopped, their movements originate, and sometimes there are significant breaks between actions that humans usually strain together like many shiny pearls.
Most people actually move as C-3PO. To be fair, that Star Wars Protocolroid was actor Anthony Daniels in a stiff plastic suit and did not try to succumb to the African desert heat. Still, the robot became an icon and the template in our nearly five decades of humanoid robot dreams. Maybe that’s why people are so excited about all these other robots, even if they shouldn’t be.
It’s guy in a costume
Atlas is different and I think it’s the combination of Boston Dynamic’s decades in robotics engineering (the company’s robots competed in robotics challenges years before most of these other companies entered the square) and Nvidia’s powerful silicon and basic models that make the difference.
It is not enough to build a robot that can move and perform basic tasks. Most of the other robotic competitors of this and have collaborated with Google and Openai to access their AI-Multimodal Models, but I think they are playing Catchup.
If humanoid robot development was a horse race, I would put my money on Boston Dynamics and Nvidia. Together they are likely to bring us a legion of factory and eventually home robots, all of which make literal carriage wheels around us and make us wonder what we saw in the C-3PO in the first place.
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