Google’s Boston Dynamics has been creating incredible and terrifying robots for years now, but its latest invention is rolling by to break new barriers.
Previously the robots from Boston Dynamics have all walked and moved on legs. The newest robot, which it debuted in a presentation filmed by Steve Jurvetson, is named Handle—because “it’s supposed to handle a lot of things eventually.” And in the video demonstration, we’re shown how Handle is already capable of moving around, using its limbs to lift things, and even perform leaps into the air.
“Everyone thinks we only do legged robots, so no one has seen this, so you guys are the first,” Marc Raibert, founder of Google’s Boston Dynamics, told the crowd. “This is the debut presentation of what I think will be a nightmare-inducing robot. This 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.”
Though initially shared only at the conference, Boston Dynamics released the following footage to its YouTube channel on Feb. 28, 2017.
