Plant Equipment and Hire February 2018 | Page 27

TECHNOLOGY Opening a door and staying upright — tasks we take for granted. Remote-controlled robots But just two years after the competition demonstrated just how far we still had to go in coming up with functional humanoid robots, one of the companies that competed in the DARPA Robot Challenge showed how much it had managed to accomplish in that time. On 16 November 2017, US robotics company Boston Dynamics uploaded a video to YouTube of its humanoid robot Atlas doing a backflip. Impressive enough by itself, Atlas’s capabilities extend beyond this: it is also able to keep its balance when jostled or pushed, and can even get back up if it is knocked over — a significant improvement over what robots could do even a short while ago. Sources 1. 2. Weighing in at 75kg and standing 1.5m tall, Atlas — billed by its creators as “The World’s Most Dynamic Humanoid” — is the latest (and most advanced) in a line of advanced humanoid robots being developed by Boston Dynamics, which began as a spin-off from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). In a YouTube video released in 2016 (Atlas, The Next Generation), Boston Dynamics showcased the robot opening a door, walking through snow, picking up boxes, and getting hit with a hockey stick. None of which were possible, and certainly not with the speed or smoothness displayed here, back in 2015. According to the company’s website, Atlas has an 11kg payload capacity and uses Lidar and stereovision to navigate its environment and to traverse rough terrain. Taking advantage of 3-D printing to develop small, lightweight components, the company has built a compact Miller, P. 2017. One small backflip for a robot is one giant leaping backflip for humankind. The Verge, 7 November. https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2017/11/17/16671328/boston-dynamics-backflip- robot-atlas. Sofge, E. 2015. The DARPA Robotics Challenge was a bust. Popular Science, 6 July. https://www.popsci.com/darpa-robotics-challenge-was-bust-why-darpa-needs-try-again. robot with high strength-to-weight ratio and a dramatically large workspace. Having demonstrated that it is possible to build humanoid robots that can both walk and manipulate objects (not to mention get back up after going down), the next step is to adapt this technology for the job site. In addition to ‘disaster robots’, which could assist in hazardous areas following a disaster, the more robots can mimic human movement and function, the greater the number of situations in which we could use them. This includes toxic environments, but also potentially unstable and otherwise hazardous environments, including mines and construction sites after something has gone wrong. Even in non-hazardous environments, having a machine with the size and dexterity of a person, but the strength of an earthmover, opens up a whole range of exciting possibilities. And once software and AI are sufficiently advanced, these robots could become autonomous, or close to it— no longer requiring human operators to oversee every action. ■ Part 2 follows in our March issue.  FEBRUARY 2018 25