Boston Dynamics released video of its Atlas humanoid robot lifting and carrying a mini-fridge weighing more than 100 pounds using AI-driven behaviors and reinforcement learning to adjust grip and posture
Footage appeared weeks after Atlas public debut in January.
@Jason Eventually, the robots and goods & services will be free, but the dollar price of robots will be high in the beginning
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.
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.'

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.
Boston Dynamics is hiring for RL roles.
Boston Dynamics is hiring for RL roles.
This is very similar to our work from last year https://www.agilityrobotics.com/content/training-a-whole-body-control-foundation-model
So need this.
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.
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.
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.
"Robot bring me a beer" task failed successfully
This is very similar to our work from last year https://www.agilityrobotics.com/content/training-a-whole-body-control-foundation-model
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 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.
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.
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.
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.