- Boston Dynamics Atlas can ship a drink
- It additionally delivers the fridge as a result of it may well elevate as much as 110 lbs.
- We additionally get a glimpse into how they’re coaching the Atlas Product humanoid robots
Atlas delivers a drink in a lot the identical means The Hulk would possibly do it: neglect the can, carry the fridge. In a brand new video demo, we’re lastly getting a very good have a look at what the all-new Atlas Product humanoid robotic can do, and it’s eye-opening, to make sure.
When I last saw the Atlas Product at CES 2026, it stood stiffly whereas the all-electric Atlas Prototype moved packing containers and folded itself up virtually accordion-style. The up to date Product, although, has much more spectacular strikes, particularly since no a part of its physique seems restricted by typical human-level flexibility.
The place you would possibly be capable to rotate your torso, at most, 90 levels, Atlas can spin its higher physique a full 360-degrees, a ability that seems to be fairly helpful for delivering a frosty chilly drink. The brand new robotic, in keeping with a Boston Dynamics launch delivered in January, has 56 levels of freedom, can exchange its personal battery, and elevate as much as 110 kilos.
Boston Dynamics truly delivered two movies on Monday (Could 18), and whereas the one of many Atlas Product robotic hefting a fridge and delivering it to a lab tech to allow them to retrieve a chilly drink is enjoyable to look at, it’s the second, deep dive video on how Boston Dynamics trains Atlas, and why they selected to show its expertise on this barely comical means, that is price watching.
Atlas practices…rather a lot
Not like many different humanoid robots, Atlas’s first job received’t be within the residence, and far of the event work has been in service of delivering a system that’s low-cost, easy, dependable, and may simply slip into a producing position. Maybe that’s why, whereas Altas resembles the human kind, it’s far much less so than, say, Neo Bot, Telsa Optimus, or Figure 03 from Determine AI. You may argue, although, that its design makes Atlas sooner, extra agile, and maybe way more able to ship a heavy package deal from Spot A to Spot B.
Within the video, Atlas lifts an unplugged, 50LB mini fridge and carries it over to a desk, the place it gingerly locations it down earlier than stepping apart and watching the researcher retrieve a canned beverage. 50Lbs is important, however the researchers famous that in lab exams, that they had Atlas effortlessly lifting 100lbs. In each cases, the purpose was considerably human-like effort. “A instrument mainly that’s much like people, which implies it wants to start out interacting with objects. And objects are available in all shapes and types,” says Boston Dynamics Atlas Analysis Engineer Vinay Kamidi.
Atlas doesn’t simply elevate the fridge. “Put your entire physique into it, was sort of the thought,” notes Boston Dynamics Atlas Controls Affiliate Director Benjamin Stephens.
Getting Atlas to carry out this ability with out mishaps is the product of prolonged, visualized coaching. The researchers begin with an animation of the duty after which, inside the laptop, run “tens of millions of hours” of simulations the place the robotic practices lifting, carrying, and putting the fridge.
By the point they ran this system on the true Atlas {hardware}, it carried out the duty completely.
It’s humorous to suppose {that a} robotic that may carry out a again flip, comparatively few people can do, takes tens of millions of simulated makes an attempt to study a activity {that a} human may grasp in moments. AI is rushing up the simulation course of, nevertheless, and Boston Dynamics researchers will not be solely enthusiastic about its present beverage-delivery capabilities but in addition about what the longer term holds.
“We have now not seen the boundaries of what Atlas can do,” says Atlas Software program Engineer Shane Rozen-Levy, within the video, and the longer term is “solely restricted by our creativeness.”
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