A new video released today shows Boston Dynamics' Atlas robot performing “kinematically challenging” tasks such as moving medium-weight car parts and picking up objects with precision. There is. Ars Technica reports: In our latest video, we're more specifically tackling something like “Phase 2” of picking things up. The old clamp hand had his single pivot in the palm and appeared to apply maximum grip force to whatever the robot grasped. The most delicate thing Atlas picked up in the last video was a wooden plank, which completely destroyed the tree. Atlas' new hands look much gentler than Clamp's, featuring his three fingers with his two joints in each. All fingers share one large pivot point on the palm, with articulating joints in the middle of the fingers. The fingers are all very long and move 360 degrees, allowing them to bend in both directions. This is probably effective, but very creepy. Placing his two fingers on one side of an item and his “thumb” on the other allows Atlas to wrap his hand around the object rather than simply crushing it.
Atlas features a set of car props (objects that weigh about 30 pounds and have very complex terrain), so there's a lot to calculate. Atlas uses both hands to lift the pole from its vertical position on the pallet with heavy weight, carries the pole to the shelf, and carefully slides it into place. This is all in the Boston Dynamics lab, but it's similar to the repetitive work in a factory or shipping process. Everything here seems designed to give the robot a manipulation challenge. Because of the complexity of the strut shape, there are potentially millions of ways to grip it incorrectly. There are tall metal poles around the strut box, so the robot must avoid hitting the struts against obstacles. The shelves are a tight fit, so you need to place the posts on the edge of the shelf and slide them into place, making sure the many protrusions on the posts don't hit the shelves.
