this post was submitted on 18 Jun 2024
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interestingasfuck
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I'm pretty sure everything from 2016-onwards is the same frame with the same capabilities, just different videos showing off how versatile it is. They actually retired that frame this year, this is the new one: https://bostondynamics.com/blog/electric-new-era-for-atlas/
I don't think they've been sitting around without doing nothing to improve it for eight years, though. The hardware may look the same, but the internal components were being upgraded. Software too. Those tasks are also their own set of hard challenges.
Edit: Having said that, the new electric frame is wild!!
Didn't mean to imply they hadn't been doing anything, that's why I used the word "frame." There are all kinds of videos of that robot trying to do backflips and the hydraulics busting in the process or other issues which would necessitate internal upgrades. Just thought it was strange that each iteration shown up to 2016 was of a different model, then we get 6 in a row of essentially the same one.
That usually means they got to a high level of refinement they don't need to upgrade, because there's some kind of incredibly difficult obstacle to overcome (like today's lithium batteries that have not developed much in the last decade), or it's such a good design that they developed the base for the next decades of humanoid robots models (just think of a pen that has been the same for a century, because it's as good as it gets)
Amazing…but so very creepy