Boston Dynamics, backed by Hyundai, is testing a new generation of humanoid robots called Atlas. In October, the 5-foot-9, 200-pound Atlas was put to the test at Hyundai's new Georgia plant, where it practiced autonomously sorting roof racks for an assembly line.
Scott Quindersma, head of robotics research at Boston Dynamics, says today's AI-powered humanoid robots are learning behaviors that were once considered “too far for machines.”
“A lot of it has to do with how we currently program these robots, which is more about education, demonstration and machine learning than manual programming,” Quindersma said.
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When “60 Minutes” visited Boston Dynamics headquarters in 2021, Atlas was a large hydraulic robot that could run and jump. While Atlas relied on algorithms written by engineers at the time, today's Atlas is more sophisticated, with an all-electric body and an AI brain powered by Nvidia's advanced microchip.
At Boston Dynamics, machine learning scientist Kevin Bergamin demonstrated an example of supervised learning by wearing a virtual reality headset and directly controlling a humanoid. He guided the robot's hand and arm through each task until Atlas succeeded.
“This generates data that can be used to train the robot's AI model and later perform its tasks autonomously,” Kuindersma says. “60 Minutes'' correspondent Bill Whitaker also tried another technique using a motion-capture bodysuit. Whittaker wore a suit while performing jumping jacks. Atlas' body is different from Whitaker's, so the robot was trained to match his movements. The data collected by the motion capture suit was fed into Boston Dynamics' machine learning process.
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More than 4,000 digital atlases trained for six hours on simulations that added challenges to their avatars, including slippery floors, slopes, and stiff joints. Atlas has figured out the best way to perform jumping jacks.
Kuindersma said Atlas has limitations. “There are no humanoids that do it nearly as well as humans,” Quindersma said. “But I think what’s really exciting now is that we see a path to getting there.”
“There's a lot of excitement in the industry right now about the possibility of building robots that are smart enough to be truly general-purpose,” said Robert Playter, CEO of Boston Dynamics, which has played a leading role in developing humanoid AI.
“The Chinese government has a mission to win the robot development race,” Player added. “Technically, we believe we are still in the lead. However, there is a real threat that we could be left behind simply by the size of our investment.”
Player also predicted that humanoids will change the nature of work, although it may be several years before Atlas becomes a full-time Hyundai employee. “The really repetitive, really hard labor is going to end up being done by robots. But these robots aren't as autonomous, so they don't need to be managed. They need to be built, they need to be trained, and they need to be maintained.”
