DARPA's Humanoid ATLAS Robot Is One Step Towards Judgment Day

There's a new humanoid robot by DARPA and Boston Dynamics, and it looks like another solid step towards an apocalyptic robot army, though this one is designed for disaster relief.

ATLAS, the name of the human-ish looking robot, stands at a formidable 6 feet 2 inches, weighs about 300 pounds, and is being developed by engineering and robotics developer Boston Dynamics the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA - the wing of the Pentagon known for working on all sorts of projects you'd expect to find only in the pages of science-fiction books. DARPA unveiled the project late last week.

Powered by hydraulics, ATLAS has a body composed of aluminum and titanium with two arms, two legs, a bulky blue LED-lit torso, and a head - with 28 hydraulically actuated joints running through everything, according to the Washington Post. ATLAS has two sets of hands - one developed by Sandia National Labs and one provided by iRobot. The robot also has LIDAR, or Laser Imaging, Detection and Ranging, and stereo sensors for its vision. Check out what ATLAS can do with all of this equipment.

DARPA says that the humanoid robot is one of the most advanced ever built. But while it has an on-board, real-time computer, ATLAS "is essentially a physical shell for the software brains and nerves" that teams of robotics software makers are invited to complete. Seven teams who progressed through DARPA's Virtual Robotics Challenge (VRC) - a competition originally challenging 26 teams to produce software that could run disaster response robots in virtual environments - arrived at the headquarters of Boston Dynamics, according to DARPA, to meet the ATLAS robot and start figuring out what kinds of tasks they can program for ATLAS's brain.

They're not starting at the very beginning though, as the successful software algorithms already employed by the teams in the earlier VRC "should transfer with minor tuning to the ATLAS hardware." The seven winning teams are getting funding from DARPA to work on the software, according to DARPA's release.

"The Virtual Robotics Challenge was a proving ground for teams' ability to create software to control a robot in a hypothetical scenario. The DRC Simulator tasks were fairly accurate representations of real world causes and effects, but the experience wasn't quite the same as handling an actual, physical robot," said Gill Pratt, program manager for the DARPA Robotics Challenge. "Now these seven teams will see if their simulation-honed algorithms can run a real machine in real environments. And we expect all teams will be further refining their algorithms, using both simulation and experimentation."

If you think the video of ATLAS is strangely threatening or too human, take a look at the following two videos of ATLAS's predecessor robots - PETMAN and BIG DOG.


Who knew that the Terminator Judgment Day would take place with leaping blue LED-lit framebots, and hazmat suit-wearing robots, riding on top of big bullbots?