Boston Dynamics is a robotics company that started inside MIT and now makes some of the most impressive moving machines on Earth. Their best-known robot is Atlas - a humanlike machine about 1.5 meters tall. Videos of Atlas doing backflips, jumping between platforms, climbing parkour courses and dancing in formation with other Atlas units have been watched hundreds of millions of times.
What’s amazing isn’t really the speed. It’s the balance. When researchers walk up to Atlas and push it hard with a long stick, the robot stumbles, takes a step to catch itself and stays standing. That’s a problem people have been trying to solve in robots for 50 years.
Boston Dynamics also makes Spot, a dog-shaped robot that walks on four legs. Spot is now used to inspect oil rigs, monitor construction sites and even patrol police lines. The next generation of these robots might one day work in warehouses, on building sites or in places too dangerous for humans.
