From the humanoid ‘Atlas’ to the borderline adorable ‘Big Dog’, Boston Dynamics are known for creating robots that resemble real-life animals. But, their latest creation looks more like a genetic experiment gone wrong than anything mother nature would own up to.
Leaked footage from a recent Boston Dynamics investor presentation shows the company’s latest invention, a speedy wheeled robot named ‘Handle’. It’s being labeled as ‘nightmarish’ and ‘terrifying’, but once you get used to its wheel/arm combo, it’s actually kind of cool.
Boston Dynamics co-founder Marc Raibert says ‘Handle’ is an “experiment in combining wheels with legs, with a very dynamic system that is balancing itself all the time and has a lot of knowledge of how to throw its weight around.” Even Raibert himself describes Handle as nightmare-inducing, but really the scariest part of him is his resemblance to a human on one of those nonsense hoverboards that were all the rage last year.
Handle’s wheels enable him to cover ground far quicker than most of his fellow Boston Dynamics robots, but its wheels won’t do it much good on uneven ground, which is an area bipedal and quadrupedal robots excel in. Perhaps Handle is being used to ferry goods around in a warehouse environment? Amazon, are you listening?
Let’s just hope it doesn’t get the same treatment as this poor thing did….
Images: Boston Dynamics/Jurveston (Youtube)
