So, the first piece of news is that Boston Dynamics decided to let ‘Spot’ out of the lab.

If you need a refresher, ‘Spot’ is the robot dog that can do things like run really fast, and is strong enough to pull a truck.

Feel safe yet? Me neither.

But by all means, let’s continue down this terrifying visual journey of how we’re all going to die.

In fact, let’s see Spot in the real world.

This is how it begins.

Moving on to Atlas. Remember Atlas?

Atlas is the parkour robot that Boston Dynamics thought would be a good idea. When we last checked in, it was running around a park and performing backflips like a gymnast.

Then they upgraded the thing to navigate a complicated obstacle course.

No, they didn’t stop there.

Here’s The Verge:

In this latest video, Atlas does a small gymnastics routine, consisting of a number of somersaults, a short handstand, a 360-degree spinning jump, and even a balletic split leap.

What’s most impressive is seeing Atlas tie all these moves together into one pretty cohesive routine. In the video’s description, Boston Dynamics says that it’s using a “model predictive controller” to blend from one manoeuvre to the next.

Presumably each somersault gives the robot a fair amount of forward momentum, but at no point in the video does it seem to lose its balance as a result. Amazingly, Atlas is able to roll gracefully along its back without any of its machinery getting squashed or tangled.

The proof is in the video:

Please, don’t ever teach it CrossFit – we must draw the line somewhere.

Atlas has an 80% success rate when it comes to performing this routine, so we’re nearing perfection.

I don’t like those odds.

Let’s hope it never becomes sentient.

[source:verge]