Is every single movement pre-programmed? Or does the Atlas interpret more general commands, such as "move to point b, grab rectangular object a, move to point c, throw object a to position d"?
The robot is able to balance by itself during complex dynamic movements, has it's own vision system to know where to plan to put its feet, etc.
What it doesn't have is any intelligence - it's not making any high level decisions, only these type of low level foot/limb placement/movement and balance decisions necessary to execute the sequence of moves it has been choreographed to execute. Maybe not so much different than an accomplished ballet dancer faithfully executing a choreographed dance - the overall plan is fixed (even if the dancer could change it), but there's still considerable skills needed to execute the sequence!
I believe there's a difference between different Boston Dynamics robots in terms of degree of autonomy though - how high level the "choreographed" instructions can be. Their "Spot" dog-like robot seems more capable in this regard than the humanoid "Atlas", despite Atlas being much more impressive in terms of dynamic balance etc.
Well, in a way this is the core/low-level plumbing on which further abstractions can be built. This is an essential and very complex problem in and of itself, that’s why I dislike comments like “it is preprogrammed”.
Adding “dumb” intelligence on top is not too hard. (Of course, the holy grail would be AGI on top)
Yes, Atlas is extremely impressive. There's a huge difference between choreographed ("do a backflip off the crate onto the floor") and being "preprogrammed" to do everything - it's obviously extremely adaptive or it would not be able to do these dynamic moves in real world conditions, or handle being kicked/shoved around in the way Boston Dynamics like to abuse their robots!
I'm not sure of the utility of Atlas as a form factor though. It's too mechanically complex to ever be cheap or expendable. The humanoid form factor also gives expectations that it should be intelligent, but even when we do eventually figure AGI out, it'll probably be decades later (if ever!) that we get the power requirements down to the point it could be deployed in a battery powered device.
The robot is able to balance by itself during complex dynamic movements, has it's own vision system to know where to plan to put its feet, etc.
What it doesn't have is any intelligence - it's not making any high level decisions, only these type of low level foot/limb placement/movement and balance decisions necessary to execute the sequence of moves it has been choreographed to execute. Maybe not so much different than an accomplished ballet dancer faithfully executing a choreographed dance - the overall plan is fixed (even if the dancer could change it), but there's still considerable skills needed to execute the sequence!
I believe there's a difference between different Boston Dynamics robots in terms of degree of autonomy though - how high level the "choreographed" instructions can be. Their "Spot" dog-like robot seems more capable in this regard than the humanoid "Atlas", despite Atlas being much more impressive in terms of dynamic balance etc.