Atlas Goes Hands On

2 months ago, Boston Dynamics' Atlas was barely able to put solid objects in open cubbies. [1] Folding, hanging, and dresser drawer operation appears to be a few years out still. [VIDEO]

When a robot is moving itself it has a very good idea of what each part of itself weighs, how big it is, and has sensors to tell it what angle all its joints are at. These are all much more difficult with an object the robot is holding in its hand. But you can still find videos of Atlas doing practical tasks, just not as impressively as it jumps around. [VIDEO] A mentor of mine in robotics talks about how the people at his research group would watch a video from an old Julia Childs TV show of her chopping vegetables and doing other cooking tasks and they would try to figure out how long until a robot could do those things.

From a different robot (Boston Dynamics' new Atlas) - the system moves at a "reasonable" speed. But watch at 1m20s in this video[1]. You can see it bump and then move VERY quickly -- with speed that would certainly damage something, or hurt someone. [1] [VIDEO]