Hyundai-backed Boston Dynamics is testing a new generation of its humanoid robot, Atlas. This past October, a 5-foot-9-inch, 200-pound Atlas was put to the test at Hyundai’s new Georgia factory, where it practiced autonomously sorting roof racks for the assembly line.
According to Scott Kuindersma, who is the head of robotics research at Boston Dynamics, today’s AI-powered humanoid robots are learning movements that were once considered “a step too far for a machine.”
“A lot of this has to do with how we’re going about programming these robots now, where it’s more about teaching, and demonstrations, and machine learning than manual programming,” Kuindersma said.
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When “60 Minutes” visited Boston Dynamics’ headquarters in 2021, Atlas was a bulky, hydraulic robot that could run and jump. While Atlas relied on algorithms written by engineers back then, the Atlas of today is sleeker, with an all-electric body and an AI brain powered by Nvidia’s advanced microchips.
At Boston Dynamics, machine learning scientist Kevin Bergamin demonstrated an example of supervised learning, by wearing a virtual reality headset and taking direct control of the humanoid. He guided the robot’s hands and arms through each task until Atlas succeeded.
“That generates data that we can use to train the robot’s AI models to then later do that task autonomously,” Kuindersma said. “60 Minutes” correspondent Bill Whitaker also tried out another technique involving a motion capture body suit. Whitaker wore the suit while performing jumping jacks. Since Atlas’ body is different from Whitaker’s, the robot was trained to match his motions. Data collected by the motion capture suit was fed into Boston Dynamics’ machine learning process.
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More than 4,000 digital Atlases trained for six hours in a simulation that added challenges to avatars, including slippery floors, inclines or stiff joints. It figured out the best way for Atlas to perform the jumping jacks.
Kuindersma mentioned that Atlas has its limitations. “There are no humanoids that do that nearly as well as a person,” Kuindersma said. “But I think the thing that’s really exciting now is we see a pathway to get there.”
Boston Dynamics CEO Robert Playter, who played a leading role in humanoid AI development, said, “There’s a lot of excitement in the industry right now about the potential of building robots that are smart enough to really become general purpose.”
“The Chinese government has a mission to win the robotics race,” Playter added. “Technically I believe we remain in the lead. But there’s a real threat there that, simply through the scale of investment, we could fall behind.”
Playter also said it could be several years before Atlas becomes a full-time worker at Hyundai, but he predicted that humanoids will change the nature of work. “The really repetitive, really backbreaking labor is really, is going to end up being done by robots. But these robots are not so autonomous that they don’t need to be managed. They need to be built. They need to be trained. They need to be serviced.”