The future is here and it might be a little too unnerving to watch.
Boston Dyanmics, an engineering and robotics design company owned by Alphabet (the company that owns Google) has unveiled an upgraded iteration of their Atlas Humanoid. In a new video the ‘next generation’ robot is seen opening a door and circumnavigating a snowy area in the nearby woods. It has been upgraded to “operate outdoors and inside buildings,” Boston Dynamics say in the description of the new viral video. The video shows this when the robot is seen picking up boxes of different weights and placing them on shelves. YouTube comments have reflected negatively at a section of the video where the robot is ‘bullied’ by a bearded engineer; he shoves the robot down with a stick and then the robot gets up again.
Explaining how exactly the robot is able to mimic human movement, Boston Dynamics explained, “It is specialized for mobile manipulation. It is electrically powered and hydrualically actuated. It uses sensors in its body and legs to balance and LIDAR and stereo sensors inits head to avoid obstacles, assess the terrain, help with navigation and manipulate objects.”
Entreprenuer and blogger Jason Calacanis in an interview with CNBC said, “Manual labour is going to end in our lifetime, and in this video you can see how close we really are. It’s a huge societal issue with jobs, but it’s going to be a huge lift in terms of efficiency of companies that nobody expected.”
Check the video out below: