Many times I’ve voiced my thoughts and opinion on the technological advancement that Mankind has made. Of course, that naturally comes with concerns to the consequence of those advancement, however today I wanted to focus on the positive side. Boston Dynamics have released two videos on their YouTube channel, one of Atlas taking a jog and the other of SpotMini using Autonomous navigation to climb some stairs.
A new version of Atlas, designed to operate outdoors and inside buildings. It is specialized for mobile manipulation. It is electrically powered and hydraulically actuated. It uses sensors in its body and legs to balance and LIDAR and stereo sensors in its head to avoid obstacles, assess the terrain, help with navigation and manipulate objects. This version of Atlas is about 5′ 9″ tall (about a head shorter than the DRC Atlas) and weighs 180 lbs.
In a 30-second video, we can see Atlas taking a jog across the field and just seeing the robot traversing through the fields is pretty awe.
The next video is of SpotMini and its use of Autonomous navigation. I found this one to be particularly interesting to watch. SpotMini autonomously navigates a specified route through an office and lab facility. Before the test, the robot is manually driven through the space so it can build a map of the space using visual data from cameras mounted on the front, back and sides of the robot.
It’s crazy to think how far we’ve come as a species, soon we’ll have machines that will enslave us or wipe us out. OK, joking aside this is a huge deal, the application this will have for all types of field will insane. Work or areas that are usually dangerous for us to work in can be done by these machines. Even space travel could be easily achieved with these robots.
Let me know your thoughts on these freaky robots!
