Atlas can’t compete with anything out of “Pacific Rim,” that summer science fiction blockbuster in which gigantic human-controlled “mecha” robots rise up and defend humans against an attacking monster race.
But the latest and largest version of the hunky humanoid (built by Boston Dynamics and funded by DARPA) does sort of look the part, glowing chest plate and all.
“It looked like what a science fiction robot should look like,” confirms Stephen Cass, a senior editor at IEEE Spectrum who saw the robot at this week’s reveal and wrote about it. “This is a very big, very impressive structure, bigger than a person,” Cass told NBC News.
Six-foot-two and 330 lbs, Atlas might look like it could crush any human in a cage-match. But for the next few months, copies of the Boston Dynamics robot will be trained to rush to humanity’s aid not to fend of an invading race of monsters from a different dimension perhaps but as future helpers in dangerous disaster scenarios like the one at the Fukushima nuclear plant in 2011.
Read also:
Meet ATLAS: DARPA reveals giant humanoid robot (CBS News)
DARPA's Atlas robot will be taught to save you if the sky falls (video) (Engadget)
What if this ATLAS shrugged? DARPA unveils new humanoid robot (Washington Post (blog))
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