Boston Dynamics released a video of their humanoid robot, Atlas, showing off its gymnastics routine. The robot uses its legs, arms and torso to complete a number of gymnastic maneuvers that mirror a human athlete’s routine. Atlas’s 3D-printed parts give it the necessary strength-to-weight ratio to move with agility and precision. (Reuters) | Voice of America

The Atlas robot uses its whole body -- legs, arms, torso -- to perform a sequence of dynamic maneuvers that form a gymnastic routine. The engineers at Doston Dynamics created the maneuvers using new techniques that streamline the development process. First, an optimisation algorithm transforms high-level descriptions of each maneuver into dynamically-feasible reference motions. Then Atlas tracks the motions using a model predictive controller that smoothly blends from one maneuver to the next. U