Abstract
In 2008, Boston Dynamics began the development of a series of humanoid robots. The goal was to build bipeds with advanced mobility and dexterity. Our first bipeds, the PETMAN robots, later evolved into three different versions of Atlas. Collectively we programmed these robots to walk at human speeds, cross rock fields, climb stairs and inclines, and negotiate outdoor terrain. We also experimented with augmenting balance using angular momentum. Here we recount the development of these machines and the locomotion behaviors we were able to demonstrate with them.
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References
G. Nelson, A. Saunders, N. Neville, B. Swilling, J. Bondaryk, D. Billings, C. Lee, R. Playter, M. Raibert, PETMAN: a humanoid robot for testing chemical protective clothing. J.Robot. Soc. Jpn 30(4), 372–377 (2012)
J. Pratt, J. Carff, S. Drakunov, A. Goswami, Capture point: a step towards humanoid push recovery, in Proceedings of the 2006 IEEE-RAS International Conference on Humanoid Robots, 4–6 Dec 2006, pp. 200–207
M. Raibert, K. Blankespoor, G. Nelson, R. Playter, The BigDog Team, BigDog, the rough-terrain quadruped robot, in Proceedings of the 17 th IFAC World Congress, 2008, pp. 10822–10825
M. Raibert, Legged Robots that Balance (The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1986)
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www.youtube.com/BostonDynamics has links to videos of PETProto, PETMAN, AtlasProto, and Atlas
Acknowledgments
A large team of exceptional people at Boston Dynamics contributed to this work the majority of which we could not list as authors of this manuscript.
This material is based upon work supported by United States Army RDECOM Acquisition Center contract Nos. W911SR-09-C-006, W91CRB-11-C-0047 & HR0011-12-C-0106
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Nelson, G., Saunders, A., Playter, R. (2017). The PETMAN and Atlas Robots at Boston Dynamics. In: Goswami, A., Vadakkepat, P. (eds) Humanoid Robotics: A Reference. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-7194-9_15-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-7194-9_15-1
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Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
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Online ISBN: 978-94-007-7194-9
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