DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), the government agency that has given us so much including the Internet, and their good friends Boston Dynamics, who have given us such wonderful, cuddly creations as Big Dog from the header picture, are now furthering work on their Atlas robot, a man-sized robot that is capable of navigating over obstacles, running, and maintaining its balance if impacted by an outside force.

Amazing as that is, Atlas is only capable of doing what it does while tethered via lifelines to a control center. However, and this is a big however, now with MIT’s CSAIL lab at the helm they are getting ready to have those tethers removed, and Atlas will, if everything goes according to plan, be able to navigate on its bipedal own completely unattached to anything. I VERY STRONGLY encourage you to watch the video in that link (it wouldn’t embed, sadly), as it is very interesting and a little unnerving.

This is a big deal, as robots have incredible difficulty maintaining balance if something goes wrong. Humans have well-developed systems that rely on all senses as well as the spine and inner ear to maintain balance, and we all know if they are thrown off even slightly we can become very sick or lose our orientation. Robots obviously don’t do those last two, but their ability to balance and recover that balance is it’s lost has to be programmed in. Here’s another example of Atlas doing his thing.