Cool! This Robot Can Do Parkour Non-stop

Atlas, a robot that can perform parkour moves. (photo: Boston Dynamics)

JAKARTA - Besides being known to help human work, robots can also do parkour. One of them is the Atlas robot from Boston Dynamics, which has a body quite flexible like a human.

Hyundai's Boston Dynamics has just shared a video of a humanoid robot successfully completing an obstacle course parkour activity for the first time. In the video, a pair of Atlas robots can be seen jumping over gaps, domed beams, and even doing somersaults. Robot Atlas does this in a non-stop sequence.

Quoted from Engadget, Thursday, August 19, the company revealed that the robot action took months to develop. It also aims for Atlas to test his ability to maintain balance while changing behavior and coordinating actions.

Of course it is not an easy activity to do. Now Atlas uses visuals to customize its movements. His jumps in particular have a failure rate of around 50 percent and there is still a slight chance of failure at each step.

Even the movement experiment at the end of the activity didn't go too smoothly. Boston Dynamics still has to improve on movements that are limited by the basic properties of the robot itself, such as the absence of a spine and relatively weak arm joints.

Atlas is not a production robot like Spot navigating terrain with unprecedented mobility, allowing users to automate routine inspection tasks and data capture safely, accurately and frequently. This is a research model meant to push the boundaries of robotics.

With Atlas and its capabilities, Boston Dynamics envisions this practice of parkour leading to future robotic helpers that can handle a variety of tasks with human-like agility.