Boston Dynamics' Atlas Tries Out Inventory Work, Gets Better At Lifting (arstechnica.com) 16
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.
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.
Meanwhile, the techs on the factory floor... (Score:2)
Meanwhile, techs on the factory floor are doing horrible things to their Fanuc robotic arms until health and safety comes in and tells them they aren't allowed to toss unfinished engine blocks from one side of the factory to the other, no matter how reliable the robots are and how much warning tape they place on the floor.
Now laugh (Score:2)
and moderate this Funny. If you know anything about factories and factory robots, this is funny.
Coming for your job (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I thought it was very impressive, it was not an easy task. If the bot can do that it isn't much of a stretch to get it to load and unload pallets. Open boxes and stock shelves. Pick orders in a warehouse.
Re: (Score:2)
> that it isn't much of a stretch to get it to...
Yes, it is. They've had it doing programmed dancing for years, choreographed box moving even. It is far from doing something useful without being slow and dangerous, no matter how many hours it can work at it continuously.
Re: (Score:2)
It now has much better manipulators with fingers that can pick up objects with complex shapes. It can solve a problem which "seems designed to give the robot a manipulation challenge". That's a lot different from dancing.
Re: (Score:2)
They don't have to be equal in human strengths. They don't require pay beyond maintenance and electricity and they don't need sleep, get sick, slack off or want holidays.
And if theres an accident and they lose an arm its not a massive payout.
Break Stuff (Score:2)
They might be heavy and complex parts, but its a good thing they weren't also fragile.
Nah (Score:2)
If they're not dancing [youtu.be] in the video, I'm not that interested.
Lifting is stupid (Score:2)
How about object assembly. Lifting is useful for warehouses, but that's solvable a number of ways such as with tracks and organization. Product assembly is much harder, you need arms and dextrous hands.
I, for one, (Score:2)
welcome our new robotic overlords!
How long before (Score:2)
The real question is, how long before they can handle a (hypothetical) phased plasma rifle in the 40-watt range?
Hostile environments (Score:2)
Of course, they'll probably want to use it for war & civilian crowd control instead. Where's the money in rescuing people & helping in disasters?
When it starts drinking coffee (Score:2)
The man vs machine thing officially begins
Impressive progress (Score:2)
...on a hard problem
It's still a long way from actually being used in a real factory, but it's the best made so far
Bravo