There’s nowhere to run and also nowhere to freerun as Boston Dynamics unveils parkour robot
Boston Dynamics, the company behind the crummy robot dog and the crummy robot dancer, has revealed a terrifyingly competent parkour robot.
Aux Features Robot
We like to dunk on Boston Dynamics here at The A.V. Club, whether it’s because their robots have decided to stop doing practical things and start dancing (like that’s going to be a good way to steal a job from a human) or because they’re trying to make their robots look cute after the NYPD tried to turn them into RoboCops, but we’ve gotta give them this: For once, they made a robot that actually seems kind of competent—and here we are, not even two weeks out from Judgment Day (and 24 years late).
As reported by The Verge, Boston Dynamics’ Atlas robot can now do parkour. It can climb and flip and run on a wall and do some dickish showboating when it lands a good jump, and that means it will be that much more efficient at jumping on human skulls when the Machine Wars start. We foolishly thought parkour would be the one thing that saves us, since parkour is/was something that only humans can do (unlike driving a car and walking, which robots are getting better and better at), but our brave human rebels will have a much harder time evading the Flesh Hunters of the future if they can’t climb on rooftops and do unnecessary flips or spins now.
The robots will need the natural energy that our bodies produce in order to power their batteries, so they’re not just going to slaughter us all, and these parkour robots will be useful when it comes to getting hard-to-reach humans who have climbed up to rooftops and are hiding in ferris wheels. Common sense suggests that it’s harder for robots to get to places that are high up, since their power cords are so short and the most common robot—the lowly, pathetic Roomba—doesn’t have legs at all, and that’s what makes this Atlas robot such a game changer.
How would you get away from this thing? Maybe kick out its legs, and then just start beating the shit out of it until you hit an important bit of wiring? Or just push it so hard that it falls down? Or… just walk kind of fast? You know, this thing doesn’t really seem like it would be too hard to kill, now that we think about it… but now that we’ve typed that, the computers will know that we think the Atlas is easy to kill, so we’re going to have to throw them off the trail with some clever human subterfuge. Oh no! We were wrong! (Wink.) This robot is so scary and good at parkour! It will surely kill us all! (Wink.) We’re very impressed by the Roomba and we don’t laugh at it behind its back! (Wink.)
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I’m sure cops will find some way to use it to assault protesters and minorities…
Death ray. Give it a death ray!
Johnny Mundo/Morrison/Nitro will save us!
What the video doesn’t mention is that one of these is on its way to your home right now and — after doing a backflip through your window — will beat you to death with unrelenting speed and precision.
That is fucking terrifying.
Coming soon: a hackey-sack playing robot and an extreme frisbee playing robot. It’s all part of Boston Dynamics’ “Hipster-Bot” range.
Smaaaht!
hasn’t this been a thing since before the dancing robots? I saw videos of this on the boston dynamics youtube page of this that were posted before the dancing robot video.
I’m sure the engineers at Boston Dynamics aren’t sick of all the Terminator jokes yet.
Tired: TerminatorWired: R.O.T.O.R.
Still not as bad as the worst Massive Dynamics came up with. The Terminator couldn’t rip holes in actual universes and then have us go down the hole like a sink draining now could it?
Why don’t terminators make good boyfriends?Because they screw, nut, and bolt.
This has been a thing since before the first dancing robot video “Do You Love Me?” 7 months ago. There’s one that was created 1 year ago, and one that was made 2 years ago. Boston Dynamics has been making Atlas parkour for over a year. Just look up the YouTube of Boston Dynamics.
Un-fucking-settling
Can I get my brain transferred into one of these things?
At what point are we allowed to be legitimately alarmed by this? I feel like we’re about a year or two away from the headlines turning to things like, “Yes, The New Boston Dynamics Robots Have Skull Faces And Here’s Why That’s A Good Thing” and “Boston Dynamics Spokesperson Calms Public Concerns About Reports Of Blood-Drinking, ‘Vampire Robots’; says ‘It’s totally fine.’”.
“Yes, one of our robots vaporised a child, but to be fair, that child was being a dick.”
Once it learns how to put the handcuffs on, they will be outfitted with guns and it’s all over for us, Chums.
This robot has many untethical applications.
Anybody else left thinking about that scene from the Office?
Don’t worry. We’ll destroy ourselves long before robots are advanced enough to be given the chance.
The lack of the robots playing an audio clip of Michael Scott yelling, “Parkour!” after every jump is disappointing.
They seem to have gotten a lot quieter too.
Boston Dynamics robots: now as quiet as death!
“For once, they made a robot that actually seems kind of competent”And that’s a problem.For years I’ve been battling BD’s parent, Hyundai, and their plans to force the extension of I-85 from the Montgomery Alabama plant to the Mississippi/Alabama state line, which would have eliminated my home and the neighborhood surrounding it.Now they have the technology to track me down and find me. Now’s the time to learn how to battle the new threat.
But does it randomly yell “parkour!” mid-jump?