Boston Dynamics releases video of its Atlas humanoid robot lifting and carrying a mini-fridge using AI-driven whole-body coordination in a laboratory demonstration

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We're going to have a massive surplus of extremely strong and dexterous robots to do extremely unnecessary tasks for us.

I can't wait!

... predict these will be $1 an hour -- which is basically $8,760 a year. Insane.

In fact, they'll probably sell them for $1 an hour with a minimum of 5,000 hours.

Boston Dynamics@BostonDynamics

Everyone asks if Atlas can bring them a drink, but this robot can bring you the whole fridge. Using AI-driven behaviors, Atlas is doing hard work and coordinating its whole body to manage heavy objects, balancing complex contact points with accuracy and reliability.

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The Humanoid Hub@TheHumanoidHub

Atlas hauling a 50 lb mini-fridge

- Practiced the maneuver for millions of hours in a virtual environment.

- Focused the training policy on full-body engagement rather than just hand-grasping, allowing the robot to leverage its entire frame for the lift.

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Elon Musk@elonmusk

@Jason Eventually, the robots and goods & services will be free, but the dollar price of robots will be high in the beginning

@jason@Jason

We're going to have a massive surplus of extremely strong and dexterous robots to do extremely unnecessary tasks for us.

I can't wait!

... predict these will be $1 an hour -- which is basically $8,760 a year. Insane.

In fact, they'll probably sell them for $1 an hour with a minimum of 5,000 hours.

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Eric Jang@ericjang11

in time people will come to understand "why humanoid"

Alberto Rodriguez@_albertorod_

You can’t lift a fridge with just your hands. Your whole body needs to conform to its shape, and bear the load between your arms and torso.

Here, @BostonDynamics' Atlas uses proprioception to manage the whole-body interaction and adapt to a shifting 100+ lb load. Enabling this type of high performance manipulation is exactly why we walked away from what was arguably the world’s best implementation of MPC for humanoids, and shifted entirely to RL without looking back.

This level of whole-body controls is a fundamental building block of physical intelligence and key to the value proposition of humanoids.

More technical details in: Blog: https://bostondynamics.com/blog/training-a-humanoid-robot-for-hard-work/ Behind the scenes video: https://youtu.be/xKK5ze3FukQ

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Alberto Rodriguez@_albertorod_

You can’t lift a fridge with just your hands. Your whole body needs to conform to its shape, and bear the load between your arms and torso.

Here, @BostonDynamics' Atlas uses proprioception to manage the whole-body interaction and adapt to a shifting 100+ lb load. Enabling this type of high performance manipulation is exactly why we walked away from what was arguably the world’s best implementation of MPC for humanoids, and shifted entirely to RL without looking back.

This level of whole-body controls is a fundamental building block of physical intelligence and key to the value proposition of humanoids.

More technical details in: Blog: https://bostondynamics.com/blog/training-a-humanoid-robot-for-hard-work/ Behind the scenes video: https://youtu.be/xKK5ze3FukQ

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Andrew Curran@AndrewCurran_

Great demo, living up to the name. From the blog post:

'Atlas uses reinforcement learning (RL) to learn how to lift a fridge by practicing the move with an absurdly large number of variations of the fridge in simulation. The hardest part is not seeing the fridge or knowing how to lift it, but learning to adapt to whatever version of the fridge that Atlas will encounter in the real world. This is a combined control and perception problem, where perception is done implicitly from body proprioception. The policy driving the behavior has learned to adapt to variations like the location of the fridge, its mass, the amount of grip on the ground and with the fridge, or the configuration where the fridge settles in between the torso, arms, and hands. That level of adaptation is one of the most fundamental building blocks of physical intelligence.'

Boston Dynamics@BostonDynamics

Everyone asks if Atlas can bring them a drink, but this robot can bring you the whole fridge. Using AI-driven behaviors, Atlas is doing hard work and coordinating its whole body to manage heavy objects, balancing complex contact points with accuracy and reliability.

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Boston Dynamics@BostonDynamics

Just months after its debut, Atlas is proving why it is the world’s most capable and dynamic humanoid robot, ready for real work. Lifting a mini-fridge is a feat of strength, but the true breakthrough is in the underlying reinforcement learning and controls systems.

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Chris Paxton@chris_j_paxton

New/mass production atlas carrying an entire mini fridge like it's nothing. Payload capacity for humanoids is often very low, when it really should be one of their defining attributes.

As an aside, BD has a long history of these gimmicky one off demos, but they've been churning them out pretty quickly lately. I think that's a good sign that the company is shortening development times and getting closer to something they can ship.

Boston Dynamics@BostonDynamics

Everyone asks if Atlas can bring them a drink, but this robot can bring you the whole fridge. Using AI-driven behaviors, Atlas is doing hard work and coordinating its whole body to manage heavy objects, balancing complex contact points with accuracy and reliability.

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Keerthana Gopalakrishnan@keerthanpg

Humanoids are happening, it is only a matter of time.

Everyone building a “data moat” w/ grippers in the meantime is stocking up on data with low shelf life. Not all robotics tokens are created equally.

Eric Jang@ericjang11

in time people will come to understand "why humanoid"

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Rohan Paul@rohanpaul_ai

Boston Dynamics showed Atlas lifting and carrying a 100+ lb mini-fridge, using reinforcement learning to handle weight, grip, position, and balance through body proprioception.

shows how humanoids may handle hard labor: not by seeing objects better, but by adapting through contact, body feedback, domain-randomized training, and hardware built for strength and repairability.

Boston Dynamics@BostonDynamics

Everyone asks if Atlas can bring them a drink, but this robot can bring you the whole fridge. Using AI-driven behaviors, Atlas is doing hard work and coordinating its whole body to manage heavy objects, balancing complex contact points with accuracy and reliability.

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Carlos Santana@DotCSV

Pero ciertamente los movimientos de Atlas son de otro mundo 😲

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Rohan Paul@rohanpaul_ai

Humanoid value will not come from looking human, but from having enough body surface, strength, balance, and feedback to turn messy objects into manageable ones.

Alberto Rodriguez@_albertorod_

You can’t lift a fridge with just your hands. Your whole body needs to conform to its shape, and bear the load between your arms and torso.

Here, @BostonDynamics' Atlas uses proprioception to manage the whole-body interaction and adapt to a shifting 100+ lb load. Enabling this type of high performance manipulation is exactly why we walked away from what was arguably the world’s best implementation of MPC for humanoids, and shifted entirely to RL without looking back.

This level of whole-body controls is a fundamental building block of physical intelligence and key to the value proposition of humanoids.

More technical details in: Blog: https://bostondynamics.com/blog/training-a-humanoid-robot-for-hard-work/ Behind the scenes video: https://youtu.be/xKK5ze3FukQ

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Chris Paxton@chris_j_paxton

A nice summary of how humanoid robots are incredibly valuable

Alberto Rodriguez@_albertorod_

You can’t lift a fridge with just your hands. Your whole body needs to conform to its shape, and bear the load between your arms and torso.

Here, @BostonDynamics' Atlas uses proprioception to manage the whole-body interaction and adapt to a shifting 100+ lb load. Enabling this type of high performance manipulation is exactly why we walked away from what was arguably the world’s best implementation of MPC for humanoids, and shifted entirely to RL without looking back.

This level of whole-body controls is a fundamental building block of physical intelligence and key to the value proposition of humanoids.

More technical details in: Blog: https://bostondynamics.com/blog/training-a-humanoid-robot-for-hard-work/ Behind the scenes video: https://youtu.be/xKK5ze3FukQ

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Teortaxes▶️ (DeepSeek 推特🐋铁粉 2023 – ∞)@teortaxesTex

millions of hours of RL in simulation, and yet this fridge has still seen some shit before the final take. Atlas hands aren't gentle I see. Would not advise to come within reach

The Humanoid Hub@TheHumanoidHub

Atlas hauling a 50 lb mini-fridge

- Practiced the maneuver for millions of hours in a virtual environment.

- Focused the training policy on full-body engagement rather than just hand-grasping, allowing the robot to leverage its entire frame for the lift.

41d4.7K585

Chris Paxton@chris_j_paxton

This is very similar to our work from last year https://www.agilityrobotics.com/content/training-a-whole-body-control-foundation-model

Andrew Curran@AndrewCurran_

Great demo, living up to the name. From the blog post:

'Atlas uses reinforcement learning (RL) to learn how to lift a fridge by practicing the move with an absurdly large number of variations of the fridge in simulation. The hardest part is not seeing the fridge or knowing how to lift it, but learning to adapt to whatever version of the fridge that Atlas will encounter in the real world. This is a combined control and perception problem, where perception is done implicitly from body proprioception. The policy driving the behavior has learned to adapt to variations like the location of the fridge, its mass, the amount of grip on the ground and with the fridge, or the configuration where the fridge settles in between the torso, arms, and hands. That level of adaptation is one of the most fundamental building blocks of physical intelligence.'

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Chris Paxton@chris_j_paxton

"Robot bring me a beer" task failed successfully

Lukas Ziegler@lukas_m_ziegler

This robot will help you move house! 😮‍💨

Humanoids are slowly moving from “robot demos” to actual physical work.

@BostonDynamics just shared new details on how Atlas is being trained for heavy industrial tasks, and the interesting part is not the backflip-level agility.

It’s the whole-body intelligence.

In the demo, Atlas lifts and carries a mini-fridge using not just its hands, but its full body: torso, arms, legs, balance, force adaptation, and proprioception working together.

That’s important because real industrial work isn’t about perfectly controlled movements. It’s all about adapting to awkward, heavy, unpredictable objects in real environments.

BD says Atlas learns these behaviors through reinforcement learning trained on millions of simulated interactions with variations in weight, friction, positioning, and disturbances.

Then the policies transfer directly onto the real robot with a surprisingly small sim-to-real gap.

One detail I found especially interesting: Atlas was designed with only two actuator types across the entire body. That level of hardware standardization makes the robot easier to simulate accurately, easier to maintain, and easier to scale commercially.

Read more about it here: https://bostondynamics.com/blog/training-a-humanoid-robot-for-hard-work/

~~

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Boston Dynamics@BostonDynamics

Alberto Rodriguez @_albertorod_, Director of Robot Behavior for Atlas and team share their perspective on how we are developing the most fundamental building blocks of physical intelligence. https://bostondynamics.com/blog/training-a-humanoid-robot-for-hard-work/

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Keerthana Gopalakrishnan@keerthanpg

Atlas is truly the frontier of American engineering. A work of art, some might say ❤️

Alberto Rodriguez@_albertorod_

You can’t lift a fridge with just your hands. Your whole body needs to conform to its shape, and bear the load between your arms and torso.

Here, @BostonDynamics' Atlas uses proprioception to manage the whole-body interaction and adapt to a shifting 100+ lb load. Enabling this type of high performance manipulation is exactly why we walked away from what was arguably the world’s best implementation of MPC for humanoids, and shifted entirely to RL without looking back.

This level of whole-body controls is a fundamental building block of physical intelligence and key to the value proposition of humanoids.

More technical details in: Blog: https://bostondynamics.com/blog/training-a-humanoid-robot-for-hard-work/ Behind the scenes video: https://youtu.be/xKK5ze3FukQ

42d4.3K254

Bojan Tunguz@tunguz

So need this.

Boston Dynamics@BostonDynamics

Everyone asks if Atlas can bring them a drink, but this robot can bring you the whole fridge. Using AI-driven behaviors, Atlas is doing hard work and coordinating its whole body to manage heavy objects, balancing complex contact points with accuracy and reliability.

42d5.7K302

Carlos Santana@DotCSV

También gran confianza del ingeniero que se ha prestado en el vídeo a que Atlas le ponga casi una nevara como sombrero

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