Skip to footer

A robot runs through it: Watch Boston Dynamic’s Atlas trot through forest

Google's Boston Dynamics presented its humanoid robot Atlas at a conference earlier this month, showing a clip of the machine walking in the woods.

Atlas is, in many ways, a creature just like you: It walks upright on two legs, it can lift things and use tools, and it enjoys the occasional stroll through the woods.

Except Atlas’s eyes are cameras and lasers, and its energy comes from a far-off electrical supply. The humanoid robot is one of Google-owned robotics company Boston Dynamics’ creations, and while it can’t do everything a human can do yet, it’s getting close.

Atlas took a giant step for robot-kind recently by going on a walk in the woods – a task only the company’s four-legged robots have been seen doing in the past. It may sound like a relatively simple activity, but autonomous walking is not so easy when you don’t have a human sense of balance.

“Our focus is on balance and dynamics and working a little bit the way people and animals do where you move quickly in order to keep yourself stabilized if you’re disturbed,” Boston Dynamics founder Marc Raibert said at the Fab Lab Conference and Symposium earlier this month, where a video of Atlas stumbling through the woods was presented.

Several versions of Atlas were also a contestant in a robotics challenge hosted by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), in which robots were programmed to complete tasks in mock disaster scenarios. A Florida team operating an Atlas robot won second place. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology's team, which also worked with Atlas, placed sixth.

But a problem most of the competition’s robots faced was following a task through to its finish, without shutting down midway. Atlas was no exception to this flaw.

“I’m not saying it can do everything you can do,” Mr. Raibert said at the conference, “but you can imagine if we keep pushing we’ll get there.”

Some of Boston Dynamics’ other creations that have been filmed completing trial walks through nature are the BigDog and the LS3. The company’s website also states that its Cheetah is the “fastest legged robot in the [world.]”

Follow CSMonitor's board Tech & Innovation on Pinterest.
You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to A robot runs through it: Watch Boston Dynamic’s Atlas trot through forest
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Technology/2015/0818/A-robot-runs-through-it-Watch-Boston-Dynamic-s-Atlas-trot-through-forest
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe