Humanoid Robots Are Learning To Fall Well

The savvy marketers at Boston Dynamics produced two major robotics news cycles last week. The larger of the two was, naturally, the electric Atlas announcement . As I write this, the sub-40 second video is steadily approaching five million views. A day prior, the company tugged at the community's heart strings when it announced that the original hydraulic Atlas was being put out to pasture , a decade after its introduction.

The accompanying video was a celebration of the older Atlas' journey from DARPA research project to an impressively nimble bipedal 'bot. A minute in, however, the tone shifts. Ultimately, "Farewell to Atlas" is as much a celebration as it is a blooper reel. It's a welcome reminder that for every time the robot sticks the landing on video there are dozens of slips, falls and sputters.

The company's newly appointed CTO, Pras Velagapudi, recently told me that seeing robots fall on the job at this stage is actually a good thing. ⁘When a robot is actually out in the world doing real things, unexpected things are going to happen,⁘ he notes. ⁘You're going to see some falls, but that's part of learning to run a really long time in real-world environments. It's expected, and it's a sign that you're not staging things.⁘

The subject of falling also came up when I spoke with Boston Dynamics CEO Robert Playter ahead of the electric Atlas' launch. Notably, the short video begins with the robot in a prone position. The way the robot's legs arc around is quite novel, allowing the system to stand up from a completely flat position. At first glance, it almost feels as though the company is showing off, using the flashy move simply as a method to showcase the extremely robust custom-built actuators.

"There will be very practical uses for that," Playter told me. "Robots are going to fall. You'd better be able to get up from prone." He adds that the ability to get up from a prone position may also be useful for charging purposes.

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