Boston Dynamics led the robotics revolution. Now its machine is educating new skills
Marc Raibert, founder and chairman of Boston Dynamics, provides the world with a machine made of two-legged and four-legged machines capable of coveted parkour, contagious dance routines and hard-working shelves.
Raibert now wants to lead a revolution in robotic intelligence and acrobatics. He said the latest advances in machine learning have accelerated his robot’s ability to learn how to perform difficult movements without human help. “Hopefully we can produce a lot of behavior without having to hand-craft everything the robot does,” Raybert told me recently.
Boston Power may have pioneered leg robots, but now it is part of a crowded group of companies that offer robot dogs and humanoid creatures. Until this week, a startup called Figure showed off a new humanoid animal called Helix that apparently could unload groceries. Another company, X1, shows a muscular humanoid who looks like Neo Gamma, doing housework at home. Apptronik’s third said it plans to expand his humanoid production, called Apollo. However, the demo can be misleading. Similarly, few companies reveal their humanoid costs, and it’s unclear how many of them really want to sell them as home assistants.
The real test of these robots will be that they can program and control directly independently of humans. This will depend on the progress Raibert touted. Last November, I wrote about my efforts to create a completely new model for controlling robots. If this work starts to bear fruit, we may see progress in humanoids and tetrapods.
Boston Dynamics sells a four-legged robot called Spot, which is used in oil rigs, construction sites and other places where wheels fight terrain. The company also made a humanoid animal called Atlas Research. Boston Dynamics uses an artificial intelligence technology called reinforcement learning to upgrade Spot’s ability to move faster, Raibert said. The same approach also helped Atlas walk more confidently, Raibert said.
