Old robots never die, they simply fade away. (And probably rust a bit.) This week, Boston Dynamics said adieu to HD Atlas, the human-ish robot that debuted over a decade ago. And then promptly introduced its replacement.
For years, Atlas has scared us silly with cutesy dance moves and parkour flips that we just knew would one day lead to our annihilation as a species. The robopocalypse never came, of course, and Atlas just got cuter the more it fell off boxes, bounced off tables, rolled down grass hills, and jived to Dirty Dancing tracks.
Yet before Atlas even had a chance to power down properly, yesterday’s retirement film was followed up today with a 40-second short revealing the “All New Atlas.”
Get ready for fresh night sweats: The replacement bot manages silky smooth moves you’d swear are computer-generated graphics, but they are not. While Hyundai-owned Boston Dynamics has so far released precious few details of the new bot, CEO Robert Playter told Ieee Spectrum that New Atlas is “stronger at most of its joints than a person, and even an elite athlete, and will have a range of motion that exceeds anything a person can ever do.” Oh dear.
He added that Old Atlas’ antiquated hydraulics have been jettisoned in favor of electric-powered actuators. Old Atlas moved like a clunky chunky human; the latest iteration swivels and turns like a freaky crab crossed with an unfeasibly double-jointed contortionist.
Electric actuator-powered New Atlas swivels like a freaky crab and is “stronger at most of its joints than a person, and even an elite athlete.”
You don’t need to have been petrified by Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Skynet-commissioned cyborg assassin in 1984’s The Terminator to fret that super-strong, all-terrain, bipedal humanoid robots sprinting up steps, pulling backflips, and righting themselves could be programmed to break our necks on sight. (And laser guns, never give them laser guns.)
With the Old Atlas, we could comfort ourselves with the notion that clever editing meant Atlas wasn’t as self-righting over rough ground as the original viral videos portrayed. The pratfalls in the retirement video prove that hunch was correct. However, today’s video might well resurrect any robot overlord fears you may have since suppressed. This thing is scary, and not just because it has a ringlight for a face. (Who had “Robot YouTube influencer” on their 2024 bingo card?)
It was nice knowing you, Old Atlas—you awesome, pratfalling, parkouring, metal man machine.
Scary, too, if you’re an Amazon warehouse worker, because the New Atlas could do that job with one three-fingered hand tied behind its matte gray robotic back. More likely, however, is that Hyundai—which bought Boston Dynamics in 2020, valuing it at $1 billion—could soon set Atlas to work in its car factories. The “journey will start with Hyundai,” confirmed Boston Dynamics in a statement announcing the All New Atlas launch.
Again, no details have been released, but we can surmise that the new Atlas will be given dull, repetitive tasks in the Korean company’s factories rather than, say, laser welding. (Remember, keep lasers away from robot butlers.)
Hyundai isn’t the only company planning to use humanoid robots as workers. Beating Tesla’s still-in-development Optimus line of humanoid robots, Sanctuary AI of Canada announced on April 11 that it would be delivering a humanoid robot to Magna, an Austrian automotive firm that assembles cars for Mercedes, Jaguar, and BMW.
And Californian robotics startup Figure announced in February that it had raised $675 million from investors such as Nvidia, Microsoft, and Amazon to work with OpenAI on generative artificial intelligence for humanoid robots.
A general-purpose humanoid robot that can learn on the fly. What could possibly go wrong with that?
