Boston Dynamics shares an incredible behind-the-scenes look at robot-building

Atlas, Boston Dynamics' humanoid research platform, is all scratched up after some parkour practice.

Boston Dynamics

Atlas, Boston Dynamics' humanoid research platform, is all scratched up after some parkour practice. Boston Dynamics

This will buff out, right?

Boston Dynamics

This will buff out, right? Boston Dynamics

I'm no expert, but that doesn't look good.

Boston Dynamics

I'm no expert, but that doesn't look good. Boston Dynamics

This will buff out, right? Boston Dynamics

I'm no expert, but that doesn't look good. Boston Dynamics

How do you move around a 190-pound robot when it's shut off? Just use what looks like a tall car engine crane.

Boston Dynamics

In the repair shop, engineers wrench on the broken Atlas until it works.

Boston Dynamics

The repair shop has an overhead track that Atlases are suspended from for easy movement.

Boston Dynamics

We need a new part! Boston Dynamics has a whole CNC setup so it can make parts like this. (Though this particular part seems too big to be part of Atlas.)

Boston Dynamics

After some repairs, Atlas passes a systems check. Engineers are happy.

Boston Dynamics

New Boston Dynamics video alert!

The robot developer and YouTube sensation is giving us another peek at its robot-building efforts, this time by having its humanoid robotics research platform, Atlas, do some more parkour. Besides releasing a highly polished video, the company also posted a behind-the-scenes look at what it takes to get a robot to jump through an obstacle course. It's the best look at Atlas we've gotten yet and shows incredible footage of manufacturing, software, and repairs—plus some gnarly wipeouts when the stunts don't go according to plan.

This is the third video we've seen of Atlas doing parkour, and you might wonder why Boston Dynamics is so obsessed with making its robots jump on boxes and do backflips. Atlas does parkour for the same reason car companies do motorsports. Using sports to push the performance boundaries of a machine leads to the development of better parts and techniques, and the tests have a trickle-down effect for consumer products. Just as motorsport has led to the creation of all-wheel drive, disc brakes, and tons of safety features for production cars, teaching Atlas to do backflips will hopefully result in better robots from Boston Dynamics.

Atlas Team Lead Scott Kuindersma starts off the video with some Atlas stats. The robot is 5 feet tall and weighs 190 lbs. It is battery-powered and hydraulically actuated, with 28 degrees of freedom. Kuindersma also gives a sales pitch for parkour testing:

Parkour is a useful organizing activity for our team because it highlights several challenges that we believe to be important. First, how do we build a high-power-density mobile robot that's capable of extended athletic behavior? How do we design control algorithms that can create a variety of behaviors and control them robustly? And how do we connect perception to action in a way that both captures long-term goals like getting from point A to point B and short-term dynamic goals like adjusting footsteps and applying corrective forces to maintain balance?

Unlike the previous two videos, which showed one-off tricks, the new video shows Atlas doing an entire obstacle course in one go, which the company says helps with reliability and repeatability. Trying to get through a whole obstacle course leads to a lot of failures and helps the hardware and software teams track down what  "strategic upgrades" need to be made to help the robot get through the course.

This GIF shows what is probably the most impressive part of the video. Look at the small corrections Atlas is constantly making. As it leaps over the bar, its supporting arm wiggles under the stress. Atlas has a small stumble on the box landing and has to throw its arms back and lift a foot to maintain balance.

Boston Dynamics

This GIF shows what is probably the most impressive part of the video. Look at the small corrections Atlas is constantly making. As it leaps over the bar, its supporting arm wiggles under the stress. Atlas has a small stumble on the box landing and has to throw its arms back and lift a foot to maintain balance. Boston Dynamics

While Atlas' hardware doesn't look too different from its previous appearances, the robot seems to move differently now, thanks to what looks like a dramatic upgrade to its small corrective movements. Older videos show what looks like a heavier, stiffer robot, but today, Atlas can flail its arms and legs around to adjust balance and trajectory mid-stunt.

The arm-flailing not only makes some of the failed stunts look hilarious (we made a whole gallery of these instances below), but they also presumably add a human-like margin of error for stunts. The robot doesn't have to do things perfectly anymore. If Atlas only manages a shaky gymnastics routine that would get a 7-out-of-10 from the judges, the robot can swing its weight around accordingly, try to recover, and move on to the next part of the routine.

We highlighted the shakiest bit of movement in the GIF above. Atlas vaults over a bar, and its supporting arm twitches the entire time. Boston Dynamics' blog post points out that this maneuver is actually pretty difficult for Atlas because its arms aren't that strong compared to its heavy body. Apparently, this stunt represents the limit of what the robot can do.

Atlas' movement is now driven by perception. Previously, the robot only did pre-programmed parkour on a flat surface or stationary boxes, but Atlas is now detecting the environment with RGB cameras and depth sensors and reacting to it. As the blog post puts it, "This means the engineers don’t need to pre-program jumping motions for all possible platforms and gaps the robot might encounter. Instead, the team creates a smaller number of template behaviors that can be matched to the environment and executed online." Three on-board computers handle all the computation needed to perceive the world around Atlas, plot a course, and keep the robot upright.