--- title: Atlas Robot Demo at MIT | TIME description: Everyone's favorite terrifying humanoid is about to lose the cables and tubes that feed it a steady diet of power, fluids and data. canonical: https://time.com/video/Wztegn7k/ og:title: Atlas Robot Demo at MIT og:description: Everyone's favorite terrifying humanoid is about to lose the cables and tubes that feed it a steady diet of power, fluids and data. og:url: https://time.com/video/Wztegn7k/ og:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/Wztegn7k/poster.jpg?width=720 og:type: video.other twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Atlas Robot Demo at MIT twitter:description: Everyone's favorite terrifying humanoid is about to lose the cables and tubes that feed it a steady diet of power, fluids and data. twitter:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/Wztegn7k/poster.jpg?width=720 --- # Atlas Robot Demo at MIT > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: Atlas Robot Demo at MIT [Watch (HLS stream): Atlas Robot Demo at MIT](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/Wztegn7k.m3u8) (3:43)  _Published 2014-04-07. Everyone's favorite terrifying humanoid is about to lose the cables and tubes that feed it a steady diet of power, fluids and data._ --- Jul 27, 2023 4:22 PM UTC --- ## More From This Series [All Videos](https://time.com/video/) [This Humanoid Robot Was Supposed to be a Teaching Assistant](/video/g7E2kGkd/) ### This Humanoid Robot Was Supposed to be a Teaching Assistant [The 9-Foot-Tall AI Humanoid Robot at the Center of China’s Robotics Revolution](/video/i3YBFPmb/) ### The 9-Foot-Tall AI Humanoid Robot at the Center of China’s Robotics Revolution [Atlas Robot Revealed](/video/TekHiLBq/) ### Atlas Robot Revealed --- ## Transcript [ NOISE ] Whoa [ LAUGH ] [ INAUDIBLE ] So as far as sensors, the robot mostly sees the world through this sensor head. These two cameras here. [ NOISE ] And of this spinning laser which is getting lidar returns to build a 3D representation of the world. It's got these two situational awareness cameras here, which are kinda a 180 degree decide to give big wide perspective of the world. And then in all the joints it has an ability to sense forces. Positions and velocities. There's also four sensors, at the wrist and feet to be able to measure the sort of forceful interaction with the world. And it has sort of a, vestibular sense here is a inertial measurement unit. So it can feel when I'm doing this kind of thing by sensing velocities and accelerations, and by combing all of that information together, the robot can for example, determine where it is in the world, and track its position in the world. And in the back here is the important part which you'll hear in a second. It's super loud, and the reason for that is that it's got an electric hydraulic pump on the back. So this is pressurizing oil, pushed into it's actuators to make the joints move, and this pump is powered by 380 volt 20 Amp line that comes through this comes from this tether from that blue box. And also this right here is water coolant for the pump, and the communications line. So all the software that we've written to run on the robot actually doesn't run on the robot. It runs on that machine over there where Pat's sitting. And that, that, this line is where all the sensor data goes back to the human, and all the control code, and so on is going through this line as well. How many years off are we, are you guys from running untethered? Oh six months. Six months. [ LAUGH ] So, there's gonna be an upgrade to it this year. It's gonna put a really advanced battery pack on the back and sorta make some room, push some things forward. [ UNKNOWN ] Gonna do water cooling? I don't know. [ CROSSTALK ] I'm assuming so. So, for the finals they're gonna be untethered? Yeah, that's the plan. So yeah, we don't know what the runtime's gonna be. The one thing about hydraulics is they use a ton of energy. So this thing's like 15 kilowatts of power to run. So, you know, battery technology's always a factor, so we don't know, it's going to be half an hour in time or whatever. We're going to find out more of that stuff I think at the end of April. That would be exciting to see this thing completely wireless, walking. Yeah. So we, write all the software for this thing. So with you guys up with the robotics challenge files and all that. So as you guys probably saw, the robots there moved very slowly and carefully by and large. And I think one of the secrets and maybe not everyone knows [ INAUDIBLE ]. We can see this robot for about four months before we had to bring it down there and compete. So a lot of work to get it to do eight different tasks [ INAUDIBLE ]. And I think that's where a lot of conservatism that you saw in the competition came from. So one of the thing we're excited about this year, is getting the robots to move a lot more quickly and dynamically. and, and also inject a lot more autonomy into the system. So that we're not having to tell the robot at every stage what to do, pick up this object, make this cut from the wall, and so on. 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