This is a shocking video as Atlas unpacks and shocks us. very sorry. But this is also a shock, as Atlas has always been a humanoid research platform, not a commercial product. And this new video makes us wonder.
Automotive manufacturing tasks are ideally suited for robotic automation, with large numbers of parts, heavy parts, high potential for personal injury, and requirements for high precision and reliability, and in fact, production and assembly lines already have large volumes of It involves robots specialized in specific tasks.
But there are still many jobs that seem more random and chaotic. And that's where humanoid robots are trying to intervene. Obviously, it will be one of the early applications of Tesla's Optimus robot, and we recently saw that Figure is pursuing a similar path with his BMW.
I didn't expect to see Atlas actively tackling this kind of work, but here we are nonetheless:
atlas strut
We've all seen Atlas flirting with developing chops on the job site as a scapegoat for construction site dogs, or tossing around tool bags, but Boston Dynamics has otherwise been a great addition to real-world work. leaving the situation to more commercially focused non-humanoids. A dog, and a weird rolling and balancing stretching robot.
But the kind of work being performed in the video above (which we can't confirm yet, but we expect to be done autonomously) is an early commercial use case for “picking things up and moving things” that companies prefer. Fits the case very well. We believe this will lead to a multi-billion dollar revenue stream.
Ever since South Korean auto giant Hyundai acquired Boston Dynamics in 2020, we've been wondering if Atlas would go in a more commercial direction. This is clearly the most advanced humanoid robot ever created to date. Electrically powered and hydraulically actuated joints give it the unparalleled explosive power that makes it a gymnast, allowing it to not only handle a wide range of chaotic and changing terrain, but also the movements that allow Optimus I have also developed a certain elegance. The other newcomers appear to be walking around in full diapers.
Inside the Lab: Transfer Atlas from Sim to Scaffolding
This new video will certainly add fuel to that fire. But for all the things Atlas has to offer, there's one thing it definitely doesn't. It is not designed for streamlined mass production as a commercial product. It's an extraordinary testbed and has led the world for more than a decade, but if Boston is really serious about running humanoids at scale, we expect to see an entirely different design. Probably not very athletic. .
Source: Boston Dynamics
