Article · AI translation
IT Home reported on November 10 that Boston Dynamics released a video yesterday showing its Atlas humanoid robot fitted with wheels. Engineers are now testing the robot's sustained high-speed movement and performance under heavy loads.
Boston Dynamics engineers said they used custom adapters to attach wheels from a standard electric scooter to the Atlas robot's ankle actuators. The process involved no major hardware changes, and the engineers did not rebuild the robot's software model from scratch; they simply replaced the original feet with wheels in a simulation environment.
In the official demonstration video, the wheeled Atlas can jump and spin around, as well as dash sideways. The modification also allows engineers to test the robot's performance. Each time Atlas accelerates, turns or stops, it continuously places a load on the actuators.
Some of Atlas's movements also come from human motion-capture recordings. Engineers deliberately selected several foot-sliding movements to study whether the wheels could produce similar effects. During a sideways dash, Atlas no longer drags both feet across the ground; instead, it has learned to steer its wheels and move sideways by rolling.
Atlas also successfully jumped and spun around using a trajectory-tracking controller. Following recorded human motion data, the system completed the movement on its first attempt.
IT Home noted that this wheeled humanoid robot is not a commercial product; Boston Dynamics has chosen to use it as a research platform.