Atlas Goes Hands On
Why Hacker News recommends it
Used as a data point on how capable humanoid robots are at practical tasks, with commenters noting how far they are from household chores.
What it is
Boston Dynamics shows the electric Atlas autonomously moving engine covers between containers and a sequencing dolly. It uses an ML vision model and grasping policy with no teleoperation or prescribed motions.
Recommended by 0 HN commenters across 0 different months, 2025 to 2025.
What Hacker News said
Cites hnuser123456 · 2025-01 · on “The impact of competition and DeepSeek on Nvidia”
2 months ago, Boston Dynamics' Atlas was barely able to put solid objects in open cubbies. [1] Folding, hanging, and dresser drawer operation appears to be a few years out still. [this video]
Cites Symmetry · 2025-03 · on “Boston Dynamics shows off another major leap in humanoid mobility”
When a robot is moving itself it has a very good idea of what each part of itself weighs, how big it is, and has sensors to tell it what angle all its joints are at. These are all much more difficult with an object the robot is holding in its hand. But you can still find videos of Atlas doing practical tasks, just not as impressively as it jumps around. [this video] A mentor of mine in robotics talks about how the people at his research group would watch a video from an old Julia Childs TV show of her chopping vegetables and doing other cooking tasks and they would try to figure out how long until a robot could do those things.
Critical mikehollinger · 2025-02 · on “Helix: A vision-language-action model for generalist humanoid control”
From a different robot (Boston Dynamics' new Atlas) - the system moves at a "reasonable" speed. But watch at 1m20s in this video[1]. You can see it bump and then move VERY quickly -- with speed that would certainly damage something, or hurt someone. [1] [this video]