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Video Of Those Parkour Robots Slipping And Busting Themselves Up Is Funnier Than It Should Be

Video Of Those Parkour Robots Slipping And Busting Themselves Up Is Funnier Than It Should Be
@BostonDynamics/Twitter
Mike Walsh
By Mike WalshAug 27, 2021
Mike Walsh
Mike is a writer, dancer, actor, and singer who recently graduated with his MFA from Columbia University. Mike's daily ambitions are to meet new dogs and make new puns on a daily basis. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram @mikerowavables.
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For those of us who have seen the Terminator movies one too many times and are forever afraid of the inevitable robot takeover, fear not.

You will shortly see robots are nowhere near that level yet.

Meet Atlas, the robot, who is fostered by Boston Dynamics.

Atlas is a very capable humanlike robot shown here doing parkour, a kind of cross between an obstacle course and gymnastics.

www.youtube.com

Atlas can run, jump and flip of its own accord....sometimes.




As Parkour is designed mostly for extremely fit humans, the robot no doubt had a little trouble, but the images of it just going down on its face are priceless.

But controls engineer Sean Mason said on Boston Dynamics' blog:

"For this team, watching the robot fail is one of the best parts. Every failure is seen as a chance to make the robot better and more robust."





However, Atlas is still a remarkable feat of engineering.

Giphy

"There are a lot of pretty exciting behaviors here, and some of them are not totally reliable yet," said Ben Stephens, the Atlas controls lead, on the Boston Dynamics blog.

"Every behavior here has a small chance of failure. It's almost 90 seconds of continuous jumping, jogging, turning, vaulting, and flipping, so those probabilities add up."





Atlas is a learning technology, so for every cute mistake we see it make, it learns more and more about that particular skill.

One day Atlas will likely have mastered plenty more basic skills.

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