Atlas | Partners in Parkour

Boston Dynamics · 17.3M views · 2021-08-17 · 1:06

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Overview

Boston Dynamics shows its Atlas humanoid robots running a parkour course with jumps, balance beams and vaults, demonstrating whole-body athletic control.

On Hacker News

HN uses it as the benchmark for state-of-the-art humanoid robot mobility in discussions of Tesla Bot and robotics progress.

Recommended by 2 HN people across 2 months · HN mentions 2021–2025

Topics

What people said

SXX · 2022-12 · Strong recommendation
I can say I'm much impressed. At the same time I haven't watched Boston Dynamics videos for last couple of years. When I checked latest Atlas demo from 2021 it look like sci-fi to me: [VIDEO]
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sergiotapia · 2021-08 · Recommendation
We said the same thing about movement in robots -- and today we have: [VIDEO] Just ridiculous how far things have come, it seems fake it's so far along.
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kohsuke · 2025-08 · Reference
So they run 5 different experiments to test the hypothesis, and they were nothing like what I imagined. For example, in one study, they divide participants into two groups, have one group watch [LINK] (that highlights the high socio-emotional capabilities of a robot), while the other watches [VIDEO] (that highlights the low socio-emotional capabilities of a robot) They are then asked if they agree or disagree with a (presumably hypothetical?) company's proposal to reduce employees' welfare, such as replacing a meal with a shake. Two groups showed a different preference. This makes me think about that old question of whether you thank LLM or not. That is treating LLMs more like humans, so if what this paper found holds, maybe that'd nudge our brain subtly toward dehumanizing other real humans!? That's so counter intuitive...
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Sources

Video by Boston Dynamics, played through YouTube.

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