Atlas, the humanoid robot that dazzled followers for more than a decade with its outdoor running, awkward dancing and acrobatic back flips, has powered down. In other words, it is retiring.
On Wednesday, Boston Dynamics, the company that created it, announced the arrival of the next generation of humanoid robots — a fully electric robot (also named Atlas) for real-world commercial and industrial applications.
For anyone worried about what would happen to the hydraulic bipedal machine (a robot home? the junkyard? a window display?) that was created for research purposes, the company had an answer. A spokesman, Nikolas Noel, said that retirement would mean that the Atlas would move to its “robot retirement home,” which is to say that it would be “sitting in our office lobby museum” with other decommissioned robots.
The old Atlas was used to research full-body mobility and to explore what was possible in robotics, Mr. Noel said. It was not designed for commercial use and was first developed as part of a competition to further the use of robots “in future natural and man-made disasters,” according to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency of the Pentagon.
“For almost a decade, Atlas has sparked our imagination, inspired the next generations of roboticists and leapt over technical barriers in the field,” Boston Dynamics said in a farewell video posted on social media on Tuesday.
“Now it’s time for our hydraulic Atlas robot to kick back and relax,” the company said.
The company’s farewell video captured the brawny 6-foot-2 machine in action over the years. That included taking a stroll in a grassy field, leaping on boxes (or picking up 10-pound ones), carefully walking on a rock bed and awkwardly shimmying.
