The savvy marketers at Boston Dynamics produced two major robotics news cycles last week. The larger of the two was, naturally, the electric Atlas announcement. As I write this, the sub-40 second video is steadily approaching five million views. A day prior, the company tugged at the community’s heart strings when it announced that the original hydraulic Atlas was being put out to pasture, a decade after its introduction. The accompanying video was a celebration of the older Atlas’ journey from DARPA research project to an impressively nimble bipedal ’bot. A minute in, however, the tone shifts. Ultimately, “Farewell to Atlas” is as much a celebration as it is a blooper reel. It’s a welcome reminder that for every time the robot sticks the landing on video there are dozens of slips, falls and sputters. I’ve long championed this sort of transparency. It’s the sort of thing I would like to see more from the robotics world. Simply showcasing the highlight reel does a disservice to the effort that went into getting those shots. In many cases, we’re talking years of trial and error spent getting robots to look good on camera. When you only share the positive outcomes, you’re setting unrealistic expectations. Bipedal robots fall over. In that respect, at least, they’re just like us. As Agility put it recently, “Everyone falls sometimes, it’s how we get back up that defines us.” I would take that a step further, adding that learning how to fall well is equally important. The company’s newly appointed CTO, Pras Velagapudi, recently told me that seeing robots fall on the job at this stage is actually a good thing. “When a robot is actually out in the world doing real things, unexpected things are going to happen,” he notes. “You’re going to see some falls, but that’s part of learning to run a really long time in real-world environments. It’s expected, and it’s a sign that you’re not staging things.
Full opinion : Boston Dynamics and Agility are teaching their bipedal robots to brace for the fall.
