The Google-owned(GOOG) robotics company Boston Dynamics has shown off the next generation of its humanoid Atlas robot — and it behaves more like a regular person than anything the company has revealed before.
The new version of Atlas can, like the last, go for a stroll outside. However, this one doesn’t have a huge cable sticking out of its rear — it is carrying its own power. It can open doors and, when someone knocks it over, it gets up again.
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As you’ll see in the video below, it can also stack shelves, and when someone moves the box it’s about to pick up, it can figure out where the box has gone and pick it up from there instead.
[Youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVlhMGQgDkY&w=854&h=480]
Equipped with LIDAR (the same kind of laser-based mapping tech used by Google’s cars) and obstacle-avoidance sensors, the new ATLAS is a bit shorter than its predecessor at 5’9″, and it weighs 180 pounds.
As IEEE Spectrum notes, the robot uses hydraulics rather than an electric motor to get around, and its ability to pick itself up like it does is very impressive for a humanoid robot.
Lets just hope its descendants don’t remember how humans teased it and knocked it around like that…