Boston Dynamics: Lord Of The Robots Has A New Target To Conquer
On two or four legs, the robots from this MIT spin-off are among the most advanced in the world. And while their videos have conquered YouTube, their new playground is less spectacular, but just as strategic: logistics warehouses.
Boston Dynamics's Spot Mini Robot, prior to going on stage during the final day of Web Summit 2019.Harry Murphy / Web Summit
WALTHAM — The latest viral Boston Dynamics YouTube video, posted in mid-January, already boasts over 6 million views. In a setting reminiscent of a construction site, the humanoid robot Atlas places a plank of wood on a scaffold, grabs a bag filled with tools, climbs four steps, runs up the plank, throws the bag to a human, jumps to its feet and then completes its journey with a spectacular somersault.
The scene is worthy of a science-fiction film — but it was produced without any special effects, by the Boston Dynamics robotics company.
Founded in 1992 by MIT professor Marc Raibert, the company, based in the Boston suburb of Waltham, has been developing cutting-edge bipedal and quadrupedal robots for three decades. They are often under contract to DARPA, the U.S. military's advanced project research agency. Internet users were introduced to Boston Dynamics in 2008, with a video showcasing BigDog, an imposing quadruped robot designed to carry American infantry soldiers' equipment on all kinds of terrain — forest, snow, ice or rubble.
"In 30 years, we've reinvented ourselves three times," sums up Robert Playter, CEO of Boston Dynamics since Nov. 2019. An employee since the company's founding, he did his doctoral thesis on Marc Raibert's team at MIT, and applied his experience as a gymnastics champion to 3D Biped, an unusual robot capable of hopping and performing a somersault.
Boston Dynamics then became part of Google, at a time when the search engine's founders were looking to invent the robots of the future, and then part of Masayoshi Son's Japanese group SoftBank, which was pursuing the same dream. Since 2021, its majority shareholder has been the Korean Hyundai group, and while videos of its robots still set YouTube alight, its new mission is far less spectacular: to automate logistics warehouses.
Beating world records
"For the first 10 years, we mainly made simulation tools. In the second decade, we moved into robotics research, designing all kinds of machines. The final shift was from research to manufacturing," he explains.
At Boston Dynamics headquarters, a small museum shows the evolution of these robots, from the first bipeds dating back to the 1990s to the many prototypes funded by DARPA, generally in response to specific challenges: climbing a telephone pole, scaling a wall, jumping in the air to clear obstacles or running as fast as possible. Cheetah, a cousin of BigDog, has held the speed record for a quadruped robot since 2012, hitting 45.5 km/h — better than Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt's best performance.
Over time, we've learned to make it very strong.
