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"For nearly a decade, Atlas has sparked our imaginations, inspired the next generation of roboticists, and crossed many technical hurdles in the field. Now it's time to let our hydraulic robot Atlas relax and take a look back at all the work we've done so far on the Atlas platform. ”
Accompanying this text is a three-and-a-half-minute hydraulic version of the Atlas farewell video. A groundbreaking product among humanoid robots, the hydraulic version of the Atlas has continued to push the boundaries ever since, from walking on rough ground to backflips, with every step of the way awning. In the farewell video, Atlas performs one last performance: jumping, running an obstacle course, backflipping and dancing...... As of press time, the video has been viewed nearly 950,000 times.
With Boston Dynamics announcing the retirement of the hydraulic version of the Atlas, the curtain is slowly falling, and a new chapter is being opened.
The day after the hydraulic version of the Atlas was "retired," Boston Dynamics announced that it would introduce a "stronger, smarter, and more agile" electric version of the Atlas, which would be more powerful, have a wider range of motion than previous generations of hydraulics, and could move even "beyond human capabilities." The company plans to demonstrate the robot's capabilities in the coming months and years.
Goodbye, hydraulic version of the Atlas!
The news of the "retirement" of the hydraulic version of the Atlas caused an uproar in foreign media, and a number of overseas mainstream technology media, including The Verge, described Boston Dynamics' decision as "an era is over" and "Boston Dynamics bids farewell to the world's most dynamic and groundbreaking humanoid robot, Atlas".
It's important to note that Atlas isn't the only robot product from Boston Dynamics, the company also has Spot the robot dog and Stretch the warehouse robot.
The development of the Atlas humanoid robot began in 2009 with Boston Dynamics in a $26 million contract with the U.S. military. Designed from the ground up to perform search and rescue missions, the DARPA-funded robot is designed to enter areas that are not safe for humans to perform diverse missions.
On July 11, 2013, Boston Dynamics presented to the public for the first time a bipedal robot that is 1.88 meters tall and weighs 330 pounds (about 149 kilograms). At the time, the robot was called PETMAN, which was later renamed Atlas. As R&D progressed, Atlas achieved a series of incredible achievements, starting with walking like a normal person, then walking on rough ground, then realizing the ability to run, dance, carry goods, backflip, and even maintain balance when hit with a club. The latest hydraulic version of the Atlas is also a huge improvement over the original generation, standing 1.5 meters tall and weighing 196 pounds (about 89 kilograms), making it more agile and agile.
"The Atlas is one of the most advanced humanoid robots ever built, but it's essentially a physical shell of the software brains and nerves developed by the team," DARPA noted. ”
Unlike conventional robots and the electric drive used by robots such as the Tesla Optimus, the "retired" Atlas is equipped with a dedicated battery and a hydraulic system with 28 hydraulic joints that are driven by a hydraulic mechanism. Hydraulic drive is the generation of high-pressure liquid through a liquid compression pump, which in turn generates power on the output system. Due to the high torque density, the hydraulic approach allows the robot to be very powerful, and based on the hydraulically driven design, the liquid pressure can be easily transmitted through the pipes to multiple remote ends.
Coupled with advanced control algorithms, the hydraulic version of the Atlas can move at speeds of up to 2.5 meters per second, strategically planning complex full-body movements and seamlessly adapting to its surroundings.
However, the energy efficiency of the hydraulic system is not high, and the system also has disadvantages such as a large number of parts, a complex manufacturing process, and a relatively slow response speed. Due to the complexity of the hydraulic system, the hydraulic version of the Atlas has occasional cylinder blowouts and oil leaks. In the farewell video, the Atlas landed in a low position during the front flip, causing him to fall to the ground and hydraulic fluid spraying out of both knees. And, to commercialize it, hydraulically driven robots need to overcome challenges such as maintenance and high manufacturing costs.
Boston Dynamics announces new plans
Despite the "retirement" of the hydraulic version of the Atlas, Boston Dynamics has not stopped its research and development.
On April 17, local time, Boston Dynamics announced in an official blog post titled "Atlas's New Era of Electric" that the company will launch an electric version of the Atlas, which will be more powerful than previous generations of hydraulic versions, with a wider range of motion, and its way of movement can even be "beyond human capabilities".
"The electric version of the Atlas is stronger, smarter and more agile. It may resemble a human, but we're equipping robots with equipment that can do their jobs in the most efficient way, rather than being limited by the range of human activities. Boston Dynamics wrote in the article.
In the video of the blog post, the electric version of the Atlas robot folds out from its lying position, then walks towards the camera and rotates its head, its limbs, torso and head can all move 360 degrees, which gives it a great range of motion.
Boston Dynamics said its parent company Hyundai Motor's next-generation vehicle manufacturing technology is "the perfect testing ground for new applications for the electric version of the Atlas." Boston Dynamics, which plans to demonstrate the robot's true capabilities in the coming months and years, will begin with testing an electric version of the Atlas with a small group of partners.
Boston Dynamics says it is working on a new gripper system to ensure that the new version of the Atlas can meet a variety of commercial needs, while further improving the ability to lift and move a variety of heavy and irregular objects on top of the previous parkour robot. The company said the new version of the Atlas will be more powerful than the previous one and is confident that the new humanoid robot will be commercialized.
In fact, Boston Dynamics has been working on the commercialization of the Atlas for many years, and after Hyundai Motor acquired it in 2021, the trend of commercializing robots has been further accelerated, but the complex hydraulic robot is not consumer-friendly. Videos released earlier showed that Boston Dynamics had been experimenting with Atlas for work in warehouses and other places, but it had not been as successful as its robot dog, Spot.
In the past few years, the humanoid robot industry has also ushered in rapid development, and a number of technology giants have entered the game one after another.
Tesla has released several iterations of its humanoid robot, Optimus, with performance updates. The current force control of the Optimus robot is relatively precise and sensitive, and the improvement of environmental perception and memory capabilities allows it to not only see the road, but also remember the way, and Optimus can perform end-to-end action control according to human action examples.
Figure 01 uses only a neural network, but it can follow human commands, hand humans apples, pack black plastic bags into frames, and place cups and plates on drain racks. In a recent reply to a tweet from the National Business Daily, Figure CEO Brett Adcock said that more than ten years of experience in the software industry has laid the foundation for his cross-border hardware field and accumulated a deeper understanding for the development of humanoid robots.
Several teams at Apple are also working to advance personal robotics, an area that has the potential to be one of Apple's "next big things."
With increasing competition in the field of humanoid robots, Boston Dynamics will face many challenges on its way to commercialization.
Reporter Cai Ding
Editor|He Xiaotao, Lan Suying, Gai Yuanyuan
Proofreading|Cheng Peng
|National Business Daily nbdnews original article|
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