Hardware

Atlas

Atlas is a humanoid robot developed by Boston Dynamics, first revealed in 2013 as a hydraulic platform for the DARPA Robotics Challenge and later famous for parkour, backflips, and dynamic manipulation demonstrations driven by model predictive control. In 2024 Boston Dynamics retired the hydraulic version and introduced a fully electric Atlas with an extended range of joint motion, repositioning the platform toward practical industrial manipulation and learning-based control.

Why it matters for physical AI

Atlas demonstrations repeatedly reset public and technical expectations for whole-body dynamism, and the electric redesign signals the industry-wide shift from choreographed model-based motion toward learned, task-general humanoid behavior.