Boston Dynamics Atlas, the bipedal humanoid, has come a long way. From the basics of walking on two, it has been taught to let itself out by opening the door, and for the longest time, it has been perfecting its parkour skills. Now, the humanoid has finally been taught a new set of skills.
In a video posted by Boston Dynamics last week, Atlas was called upon by a worker (using a smartphone) working on top of a scaffold to bring the tools to him. Sounds simple enough a job for a person but for Atlas, it is a milestone, a feat because it has to learn to manipulate the world around it to execute the task.
When he received the command sent via smartphone by the worker, Atlas observe its surrounding, noted the tool bag on one end on the floor, and sees that there is an obstacle in its way which is a gap. It continue to observe and saw a plank, proceeding to pick up to bridge the gap.
After that, it approaches the tool bag and picks it up, walks up the boxes to reach the bridge it created minutes earlier, and then moves up a slightly higher scaffold. At this point, it kind of hurls the tool bag to the higher floor as it jumps and turns around at the same time. I know. It is a strange move but it works for the humanoid.
It did not end there. When its job is done, it pushed over a crate that was sitting at the edge to create a platform for it to get down before proceeding to do a side flip to the ground and pulling a victorious gesture. Nice.
This is the first time Atlas has used his hands in combination with his walking and parkour skills and another testimony of its sensing ability.
Skip ahead to check out the awesome video.
Images: YouTube (Boston Dynamics).