Boston Dynamics Retires Hydraulic Atlas Robot and Debuts Electric Atlas Successor

Monday - April 22 2024, 04:28 UTC - 7 months ago

Boston Dynamics has retired its hydraulic Atlas robot and debuted a fully electric version. The new Atlas is capable of new contorting movements and features a more friendly design. While most upgrades are improvements, it's unclear how the new form will fare in terms of strength and power compared to the previous hydraulic version.

Yesterday, Boston Dynamics announced it was retiring its hydraulic Atlas robot. Atlas has long been the standard bearer of advanced humanoid robots. Over the years, the company was known as much for its research robots as it was for slick viral videos of them working out in military fatigues, forming dance mobs, and doing parkour. Fittingly, the company put together a send-off video of Atlas's greatest hits and blunders.But there were clues this wasn't the end, not least of which was the specific inclusion of the word 'hydraulic' and the last line of the video, ''Til we meet again, Atlas.' It wasn't a long hiatus. Today, the company released hydraulic Atlas's successor—electric Atlas.The new Atlas is notable for several reasons. First, and most obviously, Boston Dynamics has finally done away with hydraulic actuators in favor of electric motors. To be clear, Atlas has long had an onboard battery pack—but now it's fully electric. The advantages of going electric include less cost, noise, weight, and complexity. It also allows for a more polished design. From the company's own Spot robot to a host of other humanoid robots, fully electric models are the norm these days. So, it's about time Atlas made the switch.

Without a mess of hydraulic hoses to contend with, the new Atlas can now also contort itself in new ways. As you'll note in the release video, the robot rises to its feet—a crucial skill for a walking robot—in a very, let's say, special way. It folds its legs up along its torso and impossibly, for a human at least, pivots up through its waist (no hands). Once standing Atlas swivels its head 180 degrees, then does the same thing at each hip joint and the waist. It takes a few watches to really appreciate all the weirdness there.

The takeaway is that while Atlas looks like us, it's capable of movements we aren't and therefore has more flexibility in how it completes future tasks.

This theme of same-but-different is evident in its head too. Instead of opting for a human-like head that risks slipping into the uncanny valley, the team chose a featureless (for now) lighted circle. In an interview with IEEE Spectrum, Boston Dynamics CEO, Robert Playter, said the human-like designs they tried seemed 'a little bit threatening or dystopian.' .

'We're trying to project something else: a friendly place to look to gain some understanding about the intent of the robot,' he said. 'The design borrows from some friendly shapes that we'd seen in the past. For example, there's the old Pixar lamp that everybody fell in love with decades ago, and that informed some of the design for us.' .

While most of these upgrades are improvements, there is one area where it's not totally clear how well the new form will fare: strength and power.

Hydraulics are known to provide both, and Atlas pushed its hydraulics to their limits carrying heavy objects, executing backflips, and doing 180-degree, in-air twists. According to the press release and Playter's interviews, little has been lost in terms of strength and power, but it remains to be seen how electric Atlas will perform in these feats compared to its hydraulic predecessor.