The first videos we saw of DARPA’s advanced ATLAS robot it was just an infant, learning to walk and balance on its own. During the DARPA Robotics Challenge the humanoid robot handled itself like a capable child. And now almost a year later the folks at MIT are happy to announce that ATLAS has finally reached the level of a lazy, shiftless teenager. Watch in awe as it barely musters the energy to drag a metal truss across a warehouse.
Even at this lumbering pace, though, ATLAS is still imposing and a little scary to see in action. Although it’s content to simply drag this metal truss around, it’s certainly more than capable of picking it up and swinging it like a baseball bat. It’s a good thing robotics engineers haven’t figured out how to make humanoids disgruntled yet. [YouTube via IEEE Spectrum]
