Blog – Page 77

The world-famous Atlas humanoid robot by Boston Dynamics is showing off its new look and capabilities.

According to the Massachusetts-based robotics leader, Atlas achieved its smooth movements and human-like walking gait with reinforcement learning and motion capture. Boston Dynamics released new demo footage as the company shared its progress at Nvidia’s GTC 2025 conference.

The AI-powered humanoid robot became a pop culture icon in the twenty tens. Viral videos showcasing its increasingly agile and human-like capabilities amazed and horrified millions of people. Others worried the AI robot would evolve to resent humanity for its harsh treatment from its creators.

Since becoming fully electric in 2024, Atlas has been more low-key, demonstrating industrial tasks rather than parkour.

Now it’s learning at an accelerated rate and it’s showing off. It has a new look, a more powerful brain, and it’s doing stunts again. But the humanoid robotics market is in a very different place, with dozens of firms, mostly from China and the United States, boasting new capabilities nearly every day.

Can Atlas come out ahead as it competes with Tesla, Figure AI, Agility Robotics and a growing array of Chinese firms racing to mass deploy their humanoids?

The company has partnered with Nvidia to develop “cognitive AI,” which it says will allow people with severe physical disabilities to have more natural interactions with the world around them.

A team of mechanical engineers at Beihang University, working with a deep-sea diving specialist from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and a mechanic from Zhejiang University, all in China, have designed, built, and tested a marine robot that can swim, crawl, and glide untethered in the deepest parts of the ocean.

In their paper published in the journal Science Robotics, the group describes the factors that went into their design and how well their robot performed when tested.

Over the past several decades, underwater robots have become very important tools for studying the various parts of the world’s oceans and the creatures that live in them. More recently, it has been noted that most such craft, especially those that are sent to very deep parts of the sea, are cumbersome and not very agile.

When groups make decisions—whether it’s humans aligning on a shared idea, robots coordinating tasks, or fish deciding where to swim—not everyone contributes equally. Some individuals have more reliable information, whereas others are more connected and have higher social influence.

A new study by researchers at the Cluster of Excellence Science of Intelligence shows that a combination of uncertainty and heterogeneity plays a crucial role in how groups reach consensus.

The findings, published in Scientific Reports by Vito Mengers, Mohsen Raoufi, Oliver Brock, Heiko Hamann, and Pawel Romanczuk, show that groups make faster and more accurate decisions when individuals factor in not only the opinions of their neighbors but also their confidence about these opinions and how connected those others are within the group.