Boston Dynamics builds robots that can open doors, dance, and do parkour. The machine age is stepping up a gear, but first the bots need brains.
deserted office in Waltham, Massachusetts, a quadrupedal creature stops in front of a pair of heavy doors. Resting on its haunches for a moment, as though contemplating the obstacle, it turns and seems to summon a friend. The two could almost be Dalmatians. Until, that is, one of them turns what appears to be its head into an articulated arm that grabs the handle, twists it, and pulls open the door.
makes for a weirdly enthralling scene. Millions of people have watched the YouTube video of these Spot Mini robots doing their thing because it is so captivating. astonishing pieces of engineering, capable of feats of locomotion and dexterity that took evolution millions of years to perfect. But they aren’t quite as capable as they seem. For all their physical prowess, the intelligence of these mechanical creatures is sorely limited. They can walk with an unnervingly animalistic gait, and now they can open doors, but what they can’t do is, well, pretty much everything else.
That may all be about to change. Techniques from the best AIs are already being adapted to endow grasping robots with the ability to learn new skills for themselves. The robots in question are still clunky, not to mention stationary. But if this sort of software can be integrated into agile robots like the Spot Mini, things will start to get interesting. From doing household chores to saving you from a burning building, robots that move
Boston Dynamics has released footage of a humanoid robot that can do box jumps and back flips. This is a significant improvement on robot capabilities – despite what years of sci fi movies have suggested, it’s actually really hard to make a bipedal robot walk, climb stairs and just generally keep its balance. That’s why some of the entrants in recent humanoid robot Grand Challenges have looked less human and more like a cross between an orang-utan and a wolf spider.
The new video suggests that for Boston Dynamics’ Atlas robot, some of these problems have been solved. Last year, Atlas demonstrated that it can already go for a nice hike in the woods, and now it looks like it’s ready for the gym too.
The timing of this video may have been a bit too on point, given that this week, the UN met to discuss how worried the world should be about killer robots.
Unsurprisingly, many have greeted Atlas’ new powers with premature surrender to our robot overlords. “I could do without the grandstanding, future destroyer of worlds,” wrote Darrell Etherington at TechCrunch.
They shouldn’t. Not even Boston Dynamics has cracked the problem of imbuing robots with manual dexterity. If the following video is anything to go by, all you need to defend yourself against the robot uprising is a door with a handle
This type of self-taught robotic body coordination relies on an AI training regimen that could pave the way for affordable robot dogs and possibly even humanoid robots that could be used as helpers in homes and workplaces.
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