Parkour Atlas
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN cites it as a striking demonstration of how far humanoid robot agility had come.
What it is
A short Boston Dynamics clip of the Atlas humanoid robot doing parkour, jumping over a log and leaping up steps using whole-body control and computer vision to locate markers.
Recommended by 1 HN commenters across 1 different months, 2018 to 2021.
What Hacker News said
Recommends elteto · 2018-10 · on “Boston Dynamics: UpTown Spot”
I still can't understand why Google sold Boston Dynamics, it baffles me. These guys have been pushing the boundaries of robotic motion for years. I see it as another example of Google's inability to focus on anything that is not core services. Their latest video of Atlas doing parkour is just insane [0]. You'd think that with Google's focus on AI they'd want to own and keep under a tight lid tech as impressive as BD's. [0] [this video]
Cites icebraining · 2019-10 · on “Paralysed man moves in mind-reading exoskeleton”
While full control is obviously better for some things, I wonder if overall this isn't better. It would reduce the training from having to adapt your brain to control a foreign body, to just issuing simpler commands, and might be safer too. Imagine using Atlas[1] as the exoskeleton, you just think about going forward and it navigates the terrain for you. [1] [this video]
Cites PeterisP · 2020-06 · on “How much did AlphaGo Zero cost? (2018)”
Bipedal walking and running on uneven terrain has been demonstrated years ago - Boston Dynamics has a lot of nice videos; e.g. here's a four year old video on walking [LINK] , here's two year old videos on running [LINK] and [this video] - perhaps it's debatable if it's "full human level" but it seems sufficient to me for most purposes. IMHO any improvements to that would be mostly for sensors (seeing what terrain is there even in poor conditions e.g. fog/rain/snow) and modelling environment (understanding which objects might break or slide if you step on them), not walking/running as such. The main problem for bipedal robots that makes them still impractical is the hardware expense (wheels are s
Cites shadowgovt · 2021-08 · on “Atlas robot does parkour”
It's interesting to see how this has progressed from their video two years ago [ [this video] ] and one year ago [ [LINK] ]