Boston Dynamics Reveals Handle, A Robot That Is 6 Feet Tall, Lifts 100 Pounds, and Jumps Up To 4 Feet (popularmechanics.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Popular Mechanics: Back at the beginning of February, a leaked video showed the newest creation from Boston Dynamics -- a wheeled humanoid robot called "Handle." Now the secretive maker of amazing robots has released the full introduction video, revealing some of Handle's brand new tricks. The wheeled bot can travel up to 9 mph, and as you can see in the video, it has no trouble rolling over some light off-road terrain such as patches of grass and flights of stairs. The bot stands 6.5 feet tall when fully extended, though it often crouches to turn or balance. Batteries power the robot's electric and hydraulic actuators, allowing it to crouch down, make sharp turns, and lift objects that weigh at least 100 pounds. Handle has enough battery juice to travel about 15 miles on one charge. Oh and one more thing, this rolling bot can leap four feet into the air.

Comments

Re:oh no!

[hawguy]

Oh no! All the people whose job description is to be 6 feet tall, to lift 100 pounds, to jump 4feet into the air and to be able to travel at 9 miles per hour are no longer economically viable...

Time to upgrade that resume.
Skills: can lift up to 101 pound jump 4 feet 5 inches into the air. Can travel at 9.5 miles her hour. Will cost no more 10% of a robot doing the same thing a year. A bonus feature: can travel at least 30 miles on a single charge!

you mean, like pretty much every delivery person and warehouse worker in the country?

An Amazon warehouse worker earns around $12.50/year, or $25K/year. Fully loaded cost including benefits and otther administration would be close to $50K. If this robot can replace 2 shifts of workers, if it costs $100K to purchase (around the price of a Tesla), it would pay for itself in a year, assuming the operating cost is low.

A bonus feature: can travel at least 30 miles on a single charge

Few humans are willing to walk 30 miles on the job without breaks, and human breaks last longer than the 3 minutes it would take to do a battery swap on a robot.

Blooper Reel

[ChrisMaple]

I'd like to see video of that spooky-looking robot trying to jump up on the table and failing. I wonder how many times they tried before succeeding.