Boston Dynamics’ Atlas does Parkour

Boston Dynamics reports: [edited]

Atlas uses its whole body – legs, arms, torso – to perform a sequence of dynamic moves that form a gymnastic routine. We created the moves using techniques that streamline the development process.

First, an optimisation algorithm transforms high-level descriptions of each move into dynamically-feasible reference motions. Then Atlas tracks the motions using a model predictive controller that smoothly blends from one move to the next. Using this approach, we developed the routine significantly faster than previous Atlas routines, with a performance success rate of about 80%.
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