Boston Dynamics, the makers of the very GIFable robots that will inevitably turn on us all, is preparing to unleash the first horseman of the robot apocalypse on the public. Starting in 2019, the company will make its SpotMini robot commercially available, the company revealed Friday.
Top researchers in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) have called for a boycott of the South Korean university KAIST after it opened a lab with the defense firm Hanwha Systems. Even if you’re not familiar with KAIST, you might know some of the school’s robots. The university won the top prize at the last DARPA…
There are some people who might take one look at this photo of Jeff Bezos, the richest man in the world, and freak the hell out. The Amazon founder is walking with a robotic “dog” called SpotMini—the same robot dog manufactured by Boston Dynamics, which was recently filmed opening doors like a velociraptor out of …
In any of Earth’s other parallel timelines, Nicolas King’s parody of the Planet Earth documentary series, showing our planet overrun with migrating herds of Boston Dynamics’ SpotMini robodogs, would be an amusing look at our possible future.
If last week’s video of Boston Dynamic’s SpotMini robo-dog opening doors all by itself had you worried, don’t be. The bot’s creators have done everything possible to ensure the public’s safety by hiring a guy to thwart the robo-dog’s escape attempts using a hockey stick. Phew! One less thing to stress over.
The first time we saw Boston Dynamics’ SpotMini robo-dog in action, it used its gripping arm to help load a dishwasher. But after getting a fancy new yellow coat a few months ago, SpotMini has apparently since learned how to open doors, enabling the robot, and its comrades, to escape a life of servitude.
Have you seen this GIF of a humanoid robot in a lab? It shows an inventor gently tossing a basketball at his robot. The inventor excitedly turns to the camera only to have the robot throw the ball back and hit him in the face. The GIF has gone viral recently, but it’s totally fake.
10 minutes ago, I was cautiously optimistic that one day we’d live and work side-by-side with robots in perfect harmony. Then Boston Dynamics posted a video of its ATLAS humanoid robot performing incredible jumps and backflips, and now I’m ready to go find a cave somewhere and hide.
Sony recently announced that its robotic dog Aibo is back from the dead and will hit Japan early next year. But even a $1,700 robot toy can’t compare to the amazingly fluid motions of Boston Dynamics’ new and improved SpotMini, which looks like a genuine (yet still pretty frightening) replacement for your loyal golden…
Boston Dynamics’ founder, Marc Raibert, recently gave a TED Talk where he trotted out some of the company’s recent innovations. The talk mostly features robot tricks we’ve seen before, except for a brilliant outtake of ATLAS trying to help out in a cafeteria that probably serves as the most accurate look at what life…
ATLAS is an incredible machine. There’s no way around that. First unveiled in 2013, the humanoid robot can now walk around autonomously, move boxes around, and implicitly threaten to destroy humanity. This level of sophistication is exactly why it’s so damn funny when ATLAS fucks up.
Three years after acquiring the MIT robotics lab Boston Dynamics, makers of Atlas and other scary bots, Alphabet (Google’s parent company) is selling it off to Softbank, a Japanese telecommunications company already known for its less terrifying robots like Pepper that might soon be getting some impressive upgrades.…
We got our first glimpse of Boston Dynamics’ newest robot about a month ago after footage leaked from a presentation given by Marc Raibert, the company’s founder. But today we finally have the first official reveal of Handle, and the new video will make you wish you also had wheels instead of feet.
If this new leaked footage is any indication, it seems like the robot creators at Boston Dynamics finally found a way to improve on humanity’s primitive two-legged design: By adding a pair of wheels to their new self-balancing robot, giving the bot some impressive new capabilities.
Watching ATLAS evolve and master new skills is as fascinating as watching a child develop. Except the humanoid robot, seen here in the lab at Florida’s Institute for Human and Machine Cognition, is gaining new capabilities faster than any human should be comfortable with.
The mother of a Reddit user was out walking her dog when she spotted the nice folks over at Boston Dynamics out walking their robot and looking dead inside.
Boston Dynamics, better known for the hulking robot brute known as ATLAS, has just revealed a considerably smaller creation that looks like a cross between a golden retriever and a baby giraffe. But forget about it just replacing your family pet: SpotMini looks like it can replace your housecleaner too.
In March, the Toyota Research Institute bought up Cambridge-based startup Jaybridge Robotics, and according to Tech Insider, they may be expanding with another famous Massachusetts company: Google’s Boston Dynamics, the maker of the Big Dog and Atlas robots.
It’s been a little over two years since Google (now Alphabet) decided to scoop up robotics lab Boston Dynamics. Now it’s putting the company that built terrifying robots like BigDog and Atlas up for grabs.
