Boston Dynamics' Atlas Tries Out Inventory Work, Gets Better At Lifting

In a new video released today, Boston Dynamics' Atlas robot is shown performing 'kinetically challenging' work, like moving some medium-weight car parts and precisely picking stuff up. Ars Technica reports: In the latest video, we're on to what looks like 'phase 2' of picking stuff up -- being more precise about it. The old clamp hands had a single pivot at the palm and seemed to just apply the maximum grip strength to anything the robot picked up. The most delicate thing Atlas picked up in the last video was a wooden plank, and it was absolutely destroying the wood. Atlas' new hands look a lot more gentle than The Clamps, with each sporting a set of three fingers with two joints. All the fingers share one big pivot point at the palm of the hand, and there's a knuckle joint halfway up the finger. The fingers are all very long and have 360 degrees of motion, so they can flex in both directions, which is probably effective but very creepy. Put two fingers on one side of an item and the 'thumb' on the other, and Atlas can wrap its hands around objects instead of just crushing them.

Atlas is picking up a set of car struts -- an object with extremely complicated topography that weighs around 30 pounds -- so there's a lot to calculate. Atlas does a heavy two-handed lift of a strut from a vertical position on a pallet, walks the strut over to a shelf, and carefully slides it into place. This is all in Boston Dynamics' lab, but it's close to repetitive factory or shipping work. Everything here seems designed to give the robot a manipulation challenge. The complicated shape of the strut means there are a million ways you could grip it incorrectly. The strut box has tall metal poles around it, so the robot needs to not bang the strut into the obstacle. The shelf is a tight fit, so the strut has to be placed on the edge of the shelf and slid into place, all while making sure the strut's many protrusions won't crash into the shelf.

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