boston dynamics

How large a role humanoids will play in that ecosystem is, perhaps, the biggest question on everyone’s mind at the moment.

The savvy marketers at Boston Dynamics produced two major robotics news cycles last week. The larger of the two was, naturally, the electric Atlas announcement. As I write this, the sub-40 second video is steadily approaching five million views. A day prior, the company tugged at the community’s heart strings…

Atlas lies motionless in a prone position atop interlocking gym mats. The only soundtrack is the whirring of an electric motor. It’s not quiet, exactly, but it’s nothing compared to the hydraulic jerks of its ancestors. As the camera pans around the robot’s back, its legs bend at the knees.…

Last month, I took an extended break. In a bid to keep my robotics newsletter Actuator (subscribe here) up and running, however, I reached out to some of the biggest names in the industry. I asked people from CMU, UC Berkeley, Meta, Nvidia, Boston Dynamics and the Toyota Research Institute…

If you’re lucky, once a year you get to put together a panel built on pure kismet. Pairing Gill Pratt with Marc Raibert was exactly that for me. The two go back several decades, to the salad days of MIT’s Leg Lab. [A version of this story originally appeared in…

Once again, your intrepid robotics reporter finds himself in the warm embrace of the Bay. To paraphrase Mark Twain, the warmest I was ever embraced was early summer in Santa Clara. I’m writing this from a juice place in Palo Alto (living the dream), having finished a pair of back-to-back…

I’m heading back to the South Bay next week, thanks to Google I/O, which is coming back to the Shoreline Amphitheater. I honestly don’t expect much of anything related to this beat, though AI is going to be all over that thing. That’s hardly a new phenomenon, of course —…

At first glance, Boston Dynamics is a strange fit for a show like ProMat. For decades, the firm has presented a flashy image to the world — a company well known for robotic highlight reels, from the snow-traversing Big Dog to parkour-performing Atlas. But a recent approach has found it…

When you name your company Boston Dynamics, certain geographical constraints are inserted into the operation. While the Spot-maker is, by many accounts, a global brand, it’s one that remains deeply tied to Massachusetts, even as it’s changed hands between owners in California, Japan and, most recently, South Korea. Headquartered a…

A lot has happened in the half-year since we caught up with Ayanna Howard, dean of the Ohio State University’s College of Engineering — not all of it good. The broader economic slowdown has been deeply felt by the robotics industry, across the board, from the smallest startups to the…

I managed to squeeze the remaining vestiges out of CES 2023 in last week’s Actuator. The good news is that things are starting to pick up again like clockwork. If you’ve emailed me about work stuff in the past week, I apologize for the delay — I’ve been out of…

This is going to be another one of those “let’s ask ourselves some difficult questions” newsletter introductions, so if you’re in the U.S., I certainly won’t blame you for not giving Actuator your full attention until after the holiday. I generally approach these conversations through the same basic lens: a…

Let’s talk humanoids for a minute, shall we? Why do so many roboticists insist on creating robots that look like us? Get ready to see plenty more humanoid robots. The subject is top of mind for a few reasons. First — and most prominently — is the fact that Tesla…

Monday is Labor Day here in the States. In most households, it’s come to mean one final three-day weekend to mark the end of the summer. It’s a bittersweet feeling that stirs up all sorts of back-to-school excitement/dread buried deep down inside my lizard brain. It’s neither surprising nor particularly…

Allow me to borrow a phrase from baseball for a moment. If you follow the sport, you’re likely aware of the concept of the “three true outcomes.” They are, specifically, a home run, a strikeout, and a walk. The throughline between the three is that, in most instances, they’re not…