Boston Dynamics’ New Humanoid Robot Is Freaking People Out

On Tuesday, Boston Dynamics retired its famous humanoid robot HD Atlas, after 11 years of running, flipping, dancing and parkour. On Wednesday, the company introduced its successor. The new, all-electric Atlas is stronger than HD Atlas, with a wider range of motion.

The new Atlas definitely does one thing that HD Atlas couldn’t — stand up completely from a prone position. However, the way the robot gets up from the ground has some folks creeped out.

Instead of rolling over and pushing itself up with its arms, the new Atlas bends its legs entirely backward, with knee and hip joints rotating nearly all the way around, then it pushes itself up as the rest of its body unfurls. The head turns 180 degrees toward the camera while the robot walks backwards creepily.

The new Atlas video was enough to land the robot on the subreddit Oddly Terrifying, where user Jean_velvet joked, “I don’t think anything bad can happen from creating machines with higher levels of motion than any living creature on the planet.”

In an interview with IEEE Spectrum, Boston Dynamics’ CEO Robert Palter said, “our explicit intent was for it not to be human-like,” and based on the video of Atlas standing, it seems like the company was wildly successful in that goal.

To learn more about the new electric Atlas, the robot dog Spot and all of Boston Dynamics’ robots, watch Stephen Beacham’s deep dive video.