- Boston Dynamic’s Atlas robot can do cartwheels now
- The robots’ more fluid, dynamic moves are possible thanks to Boston Dynamic’s robotics expertise and Nvidia’s models
- Atlas looks a lot more like C-3PO now and moves a lot more like a human
I get it, Blue, the adorable robot collaboration between Nvidia, Google, and Disney, captivated hearts, but I’ve seen something better and more practical from Boston Dynamics that’s based on many of the same Nvidia foundational models. Further, it’s a better indicator of the next big step – or cartwheel – in humanoid robotics.
Boston Dynamics was an early adopter of Nvidia’s Project GROOT, and now it has deepened the partnership by tapping into multiple Nvidia platforms, including the Jetson Thor computing platform and Isaac Lab, which uses Nvidia’s Isaac Sim and Omiversion technologies to help drive its stunning, all-electric Atlas humanoid robot.
Jetson Thor is paired with Atlas’s body and manipulation controllers to tap into multimodal AIs, and the Isaac Lab framework is used to help the robot learn in virtual environments.
All of this helps with motion and adapting to unforeseen or at least unexpected environments, which can also improve the safety of a humanoid robot that might one day work alongside you.
It would be hard to conceptualize the benefits of all that deep technology if it weren’t for this video.
In the latest Atlas demonstration, the 6-foot tall, 330-pound all-electric humanoid robot crawls, runs, rolls, performs a can opener move (ask your break-dancing parents), and cartwheels.
The series of moves was so shocking that I had to ask if the video had been sped up to make everything look smoother. Representatives for Boston Dynamics confirmed the video is running at normal speed.
As I watched the video and imagined all the virtual training necessary to pull off the live moves, it occurred to me that we’ve reached a tipping point.
Step aside, C-3
Sure, the hydraulic Atlas could do parkour and backflips, but it didn’t look much like us. The electric Atlas is a different story. Its physiology is decidedly human. The head lacks a true face, but it’s clearly a head, and the body proportions are all normal if a bit beefed up to body-builder size. Remember, it’s 330 pounds.
In other words, Atlas is finally looking a lot more like C-3PO. Now, there are a lot of new humanoid robots from Tesla (Optimus), Figure AI (Figure 01), x1 (Neo Gama), and Unitree (Unitree G1).
With the exception of G1, these robots are mobile disappointments. None of them move in truly fluid and convincing ways. Their steps are halting, their motions stutter, and sometimes there are significant pauses between actions that humans usually strand together like many shiny pearls.
Most, in fact, move like C-3PO. To be fair, that Star Wars protocol droid was Actor Anthony Daniels in a stiff plastic suit, gamely trying not to succumb to the African desert heat. Even so, the robot became an icon and the template for our nearly five decades of humanoid robot dreams. Perhaps that’s why people are so excited about all those other robots, even if they shouldn’t be.
Atlas is different, and I think it’s the combination of Boston Dynamic’s decades in robotics engineering (the company’s robots were competing in robotics challenges years before most of these other companies entered the space) and Nvidia’s powerful silicon and foundational models that are making the difference.
It’s not enough to build a robot that can move and perform basic tasks. Most of the other robot competitors know this and have partnered with Google and OpenAI to gain access to their AI multi-modal models, but I think they’re playing catchup.
If humanoid robotic development were a horse race, I’d put my money on Boston Dynamics and Nvidia. Together, they’ll likely bring us a legion of factory and, eventually, home robots that all do literal cartwheels around us and make us wonder what we saw in C-3PO in the first place.
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lance.ulanoff@futurenet.com (Lance Ulanoff)
