Boston Dynamics' 'Atlas' Robot Does Full Gymnastics Routine
Boston Dynamics' "Atlas" robot got another upgrade. Moving on from being able to do a backflip, the robot can now use its legs, arms, and torso to perform a sequence of maneuvers that make up an entire gymnastic routine. To accomplish such a feat, the robotics company says that they created an optimization algorithm that transforms high-level descriptions of each maneuver into dynamically-feasible reference motions. Then, Atlas tracks the motions using a model predictive controller that blends from one maneuver to the next.