A video has been released showing Boston Dynamics' humanoid robot 'Atlas' lifting and carrying a refrigerator; the ability to lift it using its entire body like a human is key to industrialization.



Boston Dynamics has released a video showing its electric humanoid robot ' Atlas ' carrying a small refrigerator. According to Atlas engineers, significant advancements are needed in both hardware and operation to achieve performance and reliability in real-world environments, and the video released is an important experiment demonstrating those advancements.

Training a Humanoid Robot for Hard Work | Boston Dynamics
https://bostondynamics.com/blog/training-a-humanoid-robot-for-hard-work/




In the video, Atlas first walks to a refrigerator that is placed on a wooden block.



It rotates its body 360 degrees.



Get into a crouching position and support yourself firmly.



I lifted the refrigerator by simply standing up. I maintained balance by tilting it backwards.



While still holding the drink, I back up and move towards the person waiting for their drink.



I rotated my body to place the refrigerator on the table.



I'm taking a drink out of the refrigerator.



Technical details of this demo have been published on their blog. According to Boston Dynamics, while the current mainstream approach in cutting-edge technology achieves excellent motion, it relies too heavily on continuous camera feedback to understand the world and control motion, and may not accurately grasp factors such as weight or surface slipperiness that cannot be judged by appearance alone. It also has several limitations, such as interacting through a very limited surface area of the robot, such as fingertips, and being almost without exception specialized for lightweight tasks.

Therefore, Boston Dynamics points out that the concept of 'bodily intelligence' needs to be broadened for actual work, especially jobs involving heavy labor. They explain that it's not just about looking and using your hands, but also about predicting the weight, tilting your body, moving your body to match the shape of the object you're lifting to adapt to the weight and determine if you can lift it, and then using not just your hands but your legs and entire torso to support the load in a human-like manner.

To demonstrate lifting heavy objects using its whole body, Atlas was trained using reinforcement learning (RL) to learn movements from a vast number of refrigerator variations, enabling it to understand how to lift refrigerators of various shapes and weights. Atlas reportedly ran millions of hours of simulations to learn how to adapt its movements to the various variations of refrigerators.



Boston Dynamics highlights the high fidelity of its simulation environment as one of its most important improvements. They explain that the gap between simulation and actual robot operation has been significantly reduced, meaning that if the simulation shows good performance, the robot will also perform well.

Another important feature not apparent from the video is that Atlas is designed with mass production and maintainability in mind. The actuators, which are the drive systems used throughout the entire torso, are standardized to just two types, achieving both high performance and low cost through mass production. Furthermore, the aircraft is perfectly symmetrical, with both arms and legs being completely identical. The structure of the shoulders and pelvis is also standardized, reducing the number of parts and maintenance costs. In addition, Boston Dynamics explains that by eliminating cables that cross joints, the actuators can rotate indefinitely, resulting in a lower failure rate and more flexible movement.

In January 2026, Boston Dynamics announced an AI partnership with Google DeepMind, Google's AI research and development company, and is working to integrate Google DeepMind's AI model for robots, ' Gemini Robotics ,' into Atlas. Boston Dynamics positions Atlas not as a research robot but as an industrial robot intended for mass production, stating that it will maximize Atlas's reliability and performance while simultaneously pushing the boundaries of new capabilities.

Boston Dynamics and Google DeepMind have formed an AI partnership, integrating Boston Dynamics' humanoid robot Atlas with 'Gemini Robotics' - GIGAZINE



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in AI,   Hardware, Posted by log1e_dh