U.S. robotics company Boston Dynamics has released new videos showing two of its creations in action. The jumping humanoid Atlas and the doglike SpotMini star in the clips which, depending on your worldview, will be either stunning or haunting.
The first demonstration, uploaded to YouTube on Thursday, shows the yellow robot-dog autonomously navigating a route through an office and a lab facility. It approaches a set of wooden stairs, and without missing a beat clambers up one side and down the other.
“Before the test, the robot is manually driven through the space, so it can build a map of the space using visual data from cameras mounted on the front, back and sides of the robot,” Boston Dynamics explained on its YouTube channel. “During the autonomous run, SpotMini uses data from the cameras to localize itself in the map and to detect and avoid obstacles. Once the operator presses ‘GO’ at the beginning of the video, the robot is on its own.”
In the second video, titled “Getting Some Air, Atlas?,” the advanced humanoid robot is seen running across a garden. It too demonstrates obstacle awareness by jumping over a wooden log and landing on its metal feet at the other side. Give Atlas a human head and a hip holster, and it’s only a few steps removed from being a real-life RoboCop.
By Jason Murdock