Today, Boston Dynamics showed two new videos with the results of their work.
First video - Getting some air, Atlas? (Let's take a walk, Atlas?):On it, the two-legged “humanlike” Atlas robot runs on an uneven surface and jumps over an obstacle. It imitates the running of a “tired” person - waving “hands” and successfully balancing quite rigidly relying on one or the other foot, while the center of mass does not move in a straight line, but swings left and right. In the process of running, he is still noisy much stronger than a living person.
It remains to teach him to do on the run flips, as in this video from November 16, 2017:The second video - SpotMini Autonomous Navigation (SpotMini Autonomous Navigation):In this video, SpotMini demonstrates its abilities in autonomous navigation, running through the company's offices and laboratories. Before the start of the test, the robot was guided along the route and he created a space map using data from his cameras located in front on the sides and behind. In offline mode, SpotMini uses data from the same cameras to understand its location on this map, as well as to avoid obstacles. The operator can only give the command "GO", after which the robot runs along the entire route independently. Travel time is a little over 6 minutes. QR codes that are visible on the video are needed not for navigation, but for performance measurements.
Interestingly, on the protection of the "feet" SpotMini visible damage, probably associated with collisions in the learning process. Another interesting point is that the descent from the stairs SpotMini overcomes backwards.
Let me remind the characteristics of robots:Atlas: Height - 1.5 meters. Weight - 75 kg. Portable load - 11 kg. The power source is the battery. Drive - hydraulic. Vision - LiDAR and stereo cameras. The number of joints - 28.
SpotMini: Height - 0.84 meters. Weight - 25 kg (30 kg with a manipulator). Portable load - 14 kg. The power source is the battery. Drive - electric. Sight - stereo camera. The number of joints - 17.