Boston Dynamics, the Robotic division of Google’s Parent Company Alphabet, has introduced a new robotic creation called Handle.
The company founder Marc Raibert unveiled what is now popularly being termed as their “nightmare-inducing” robot with two wheels at Abundance 360 event in Los Angeles. He introduced the robot on the stage via a video and remarked that it would be a great surprise for everyone, as in the video it can be seen that the robot is actually on wheels rather than the traditional “legs” that most robots are made of.
Boston Dynamics has introduced Handle as a self balancing robot which does not have attached cables. This wheeled-robot walks with a decent speed, has the ability of rebalancing itself even if it falls, and has been designed with an objective to work faster than humans and perform better than them. Though it has not been officially revealed yet, it was presented to investors via video and was uploaded on YouTube by a venture capitalist Steve Jurvetson.
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In the video it shows how the robot picks the boxes and places them correctly. With effective vision system, it identifies the boxes placed at different places and picks them up to complete the task. It is basically an experiment combining wheels and legs. The peculiar qualities of two legged Handle such as handling objects, self balancing, knowledge to spread weight around and identifying different objects make it a unique experiment. The footage shows that the robot is able to crouch, leap, twirl, and zip around on its hand limbs. The appearance of the robot somehow resembles the team’s previous work Atlas.
In the video, the robot comfortably walks through the bar identifying obstacles such as chairs and tables and simply navigates nicely. Raibert told the audience that the robot is effective and can carry heavy load. With wheels it can jump around and move objects in a warehouse.
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In 2013, the company Boston Dynamics was acquired by Google’s parent company Alphabet. It was earlier in the news that Alphabet is interested in selling the firm as it cannot invest in products that take as many as 10 years to develop. Till now, there is no official news related to the status of Boston Dynamics. Toyota and Amazon were two of the interested buyers back then. It is expected that the new Handle robot, if successful, can attract plenty of lucrative bids.
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