Atlas droid totally kicks yo’arse (mad robot news).

You’ve heard of the Atlas robot from Boston Dynamics?

Well BD has trained their droid in the noble art of Parkour, including combat abilities such as handstand tumbling, jump twists and cartwheels. Everything the young robot about town needs for the coming human extinction event, perhaps?

This is what they have to say:

First, an optimisation algorithm transforms high-level descriptions of each manoeuvre into dynamically-feasible reference motions. Then Atlas tracks the motions using a model predictive controller that smoothly blends from one manoeuvre to the next.