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Boston Dynamics' Next-Gen ATLAS Sheds the Tether (roboticstrends.com)

Posted by timothy on from the not-creepy-at-all dept.

Boston Dynamics' ATLAS robot has been featured here a few times before. An anonymous reader points out that the company has just posted a video of the newest version of the ATLAS, "and it's absolutely incredible." The video shows ATLAS walk, open a door, maintain its balance while it walks through snow and semi-rough terrain, squat and pick up 10-pound boxes and much more. And it does everything without a tether. The new version is electrically powered and hydraulically actuated. It uses sensors in its body and legs to balance and LIDAR and stereo sensors in its head to avoid obstacles, assess the terrain and help with navigation. This version of Atlas is about 5' 9" tall (about a head shorter than the DRC Atlas) and weighs 180 lbs.

6 of 200 comments (clear)

  1. All Jokes aside... by Stray1 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This is pretty amazing...

  2. Well, there go those last remaining factory jobs by NotDrWho · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Better get used to high unemployment.

    --
    SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
  3. Re:Well, there go those last remaining factory job by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    All through history, luddites have been scared that technological advances would take away jobs and push people into poverty, and it has never happened. In fact, the opposite has occurred. Productivity has skyrocketed, allowing people to create more and more goods even as the cost of subsistence items in real money has plummeted. And as old jobs become fewer or unnecessary, people move into new jobs that didn't exist before. Buggy whip makers become solar panel installers, chimney sweeps become IT tech support workers, etc. Only the most insecure among us fear technological progress.

  4. Kind of freaky... by nycsubway · · Score: 2, Insightful

    So, this is neat and all... but where does it go next? Once these robots are mass produced and are able to build more of themselves, what happens after that? These robots can easily do nearly every job a person can do, but realistically at some point you will run out of jobs left for actual people. People still need something to do.

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    http://github.com/gbook/nidb
    1. Re:Kind of freaky... by Fire_Wraith · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Two general options (and variations thereupon):

      The first is some sort of shared wealth and prosperity, where the productivity of robots is shared such that nobody has to work for survival level needs. Luxury goods would still have value, and people would still be employed to create things, whether it be ideas, music, arts, entertainment, etc, probably on an entirely free market basis (think like the way successful Youtube or Twitch streamers work now).

      The second is some form of dystopia, where the productivity of robots is owned only by some, not everyone. Those people get rich and prosper, and everyone else who isn't so lucky scrapes to get by and not starve.

      That may seem a bit ridiculous, but consider that our present attitudes and values are still rooted in our history, dating back to times where we expected everyone to work, because it was necessary for survival. In a subsistence farming village, everyone needed to work, and freeloaders were dangerous parasites. But in a world where robots do all the work, to the point that there's enough food/shelter/etc for everyone, that paradigm no longer applies, and we need new ones, because the value of low skilled human labor will be so low that it's not enough to survive on.

  5. Re:Well, there go those last remaining factory job by kellymcdonald78 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    And the Shuttle launched just fine every time until Challenger. That's the thing about trends, you can use them to predict the future until you can't. Just like the warning that goes with every investment product "past performance may not be indicative of future gains". So yes, in the past, new technology has increased productivity and people have just moved to newer opportunities, however that doesn't guarantee that this will happen ad infinitum. Agrarian workers moved to manufacturing, and then into services, some of these were hugely disruptive and sometimes took generations for the transition to occur. There is also the question of looking at this from societies perspective and an individuals perspective. High school kids that once went to trucking school will now go to self driving car technician school. However an individual 45 year old truck driver who finds himself out of work as we transition to automated trucking isn't just going to seamlessly transition into the role of self driving car technician. There is also the concern of kids saddled with 6 figures of debt from their degree program (say in something useful as a civil engineer), finding that most of their career doesn't exist 20 years out when expert systems start designing buildings (or at least when demand for civil engineers drops ten fold). Sure you can say be the best civil engineer you can, keep learning, stay on the cutting edge, but in the end 90% of civil engineers will still be on unemployment