Atlas is already one of the most impressive robots. It now has gotten wheels that enables researchers to test RL whole-body controllers. As they explain, they wanted to be able to push the motors to deliver high torque and high speed continuously. They managed to pull it off with a custom adapter to mount a scooter rim to the ankle actuator.
Each wheel is simply modeled as an “ankle” that can spin continuously, so all I had to do was take the baseline robot model and swap the feet out for wheels.
When rubber meets the road, we have to get creative to ensure our robots will be reliable and performant outside of the lab! Putting wheels on Atlas let us test how faithfully an RL whole-body controller can work with real actuators running at the edge.
Learn more about this experiment: https://t.co/jLfnmuIZbl
Join our team: https://t.co/AKksfLSB0k— Boston Dynamics (@BostonDynamics) November 9, 2026
As the above video shows, this robot can now do 360-degree spins. It can drift and slide around with agility.
[HT]
