With rapid advances in artificial intelligence, computer scientists and engineers are making progress in developing robots that look and act like humans. A global race is underway to develop humanoid robots for widespread use.
Boston Dynamics has established itself as a leader in the field. With the support of South Korean car manufacturer Hyundai, an 88% shareholder in Boston Dynamics, the Massachusetts company is testing a new generation of its Atlas humanoid robot.
Last October, a 5-foot-9, 200-pound Atlas was put to the test at Hyundai’s new Georgia plant, where he practiced autonomously sorting roof racks for the assembly line.
Today’s AI-powered humanoids are learning movements that until recently were considered a step too far for a machine, according to Scott Kuindersma, head of robotics research at Boston Dynamics.
“A lot of that has to do with the way we program these robots now, where it’s more about teaching, demonstrations and machine learning than manual programming.” » said Kuindersma.
How Atlas is formed
When 60 minutes visited Boston Dynamics headquarters in 2021Atlas was a bulky hydraulic robot that could run and jump. At the time, Atlas relied on algorithms written by engineers. Today’s Atlas is sleeker, with an all-electric body and an AI brain powered by from Nvidia advanced microchips, making him intelligent enough to master feats that are hard to believe.
Atlas learns in many ways. At Boston Dynamics, machine learning scientist Kevin Bergamin demonstrated an example of supervised learning. Wearing a virtual reality headset, Bergamin took direct control of the humanoid and guided its hands and arms through each task until Atlas succeeded.
“This generates data that we can use to train the robot’s AI models to then perform this task autonomously,” Kuindersma said.
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Another teaching technique involves a combination of motion capture. 60 Minutes correspondent Bill Whitaker wore the costume while performing jumping jacks.
Since Atlas’ body was different from Whitaker’s, the robot was trained to match his movements. The data collected by the motion capture suit was fed into Boston Dynamics’ machine learning process.
More than 4,000 digital Atlases trained for six hours in simulation. The simulation added challenges for the avatars – such as slippery floors, slopes or steep joints – and focused on the best way for Atlas to perform the jumping jacks.
The Boston Dynamics team then uploaded the new skill into the AI system that controls each Atlas robot. Once one was trained, they were all trained. At the end of the process, Atlas performed jumps that resembled those of Whitaker.
Having learned the same technique, Atlas demonstrated the ability to run, crawl, jump and dance.
There are limits, Kuindersma said. Atlas is not competent at performing most of the routine tasks that people do in their daily lives, such as putting on clothes or pouring themselves a cup of coffee.
“No humanoid does this as well as a person,” Kuindersma said. “But I think what’s really exciting now is that we see a path to get there.”
The future of humanoids
Boston Dynamics CEO Robert Playter led the company’s humanoid development.
“There is a lot of excitement in the industry right now about the potential for building robots that are smart enough to become truly versatile,” he said.
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Goldman Sachs predicts that the humanoid market will reach $38 billion within ten years. Boston Dynamics and other American robot makers are fighting for dominance. China’s state-backed companies are also in the race.
“The Chinese government is on a mission to win the robotics race,” Playter said. “Technically, I think we remain ahead. But there is a real risk that, simply because of the scale of investment, we could fall behind.”
Should humans be worried about humanoids?
As fears grow that AI will displace workers, humanoid robots are learning to perform human tasks. Boston Dynamics is training Atlas to do work that human workers currently do at Hyundai’s Georgia plant.
Playter said it could be several years before Atlas becomes a full-time worker at Hyundai, but he predicted humanoids would change the nature of work.
“The really repetitive, really backbreaking work will eventually be done by robots. But these robots are not so autonomous that they don’t need to be managed. They need to be built. They need to be trained. They need to be maintained.”
Playter said there are benefits to creating robots like Atlas, which can move in ways humans can’t.
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“We would like [robots] who might be stronger than us or tolerate more heat than us or definitely go somewhere dangerous that we shouldn’t go,” he said. “So you really want superhuman abilities.”
Still, Playter said there’s no reason to worry about a future like the one depicted in “The Terminator.”
“[If you] I saw how hard we had to work to get robots to just do some of the simple tasks we want them to do, which would allay concerns about sentience and rogue robots,” he said.
