Why Boston Dynamics Gave Their Atlas Robot a Head

Taylor Frey-Baker, a mechanical engineer at Boston Dynamics, shared why their all-electric Atlas robot, unveiled in 2024, has a head, contrasting it with the previous hydraulic version, which didn’t need one.

Hydraulic Atlas didn’t have a head mainly because it was a research platform. It was doing a lot of acrobatic and athletic work. It really only needed to see directly in front of it so that it could tell what terrain it was on. …So Electric Atlas has a head because it’s going to be working around other people. And so it’s important for Electric Atlas to have a better sense of the environment around it, to have a wider field of view.

Frey-Baker also explained how the modular head makes upgrades easier, allowing Boston Dynamics to keep up with advances in compute technology.

So the head itself can swap onto and off of robots very easily. And then the compute core inside of the head comes in and out of the head like a video game cartridge. So what modularity does for us is let us keep up with the pace of advancement in compute technology. So if there’s some new technology, we don’t have to redesign the entire robot from the ground up.