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
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