Skip to Content
Artificial intelligence

Watching Boston Dynamics’ new robot stack boxes is weirdly mesmerizing

March 29, 2019

The video shows two robots moving cardboard boxes from a pallet onto a conveyor belt.

Background: Boston Dynamics’ videos have ranged from the unsettling to the silly, with robots completing tasks as diverse as jumping up steps, opening doors, or dancing to “Uptown Funk.” This latest, slightly more dull yet weirdly mesmerizing, video is all about showing off the potential for its robotics to be used in a real-life situation. The robots are an updated version of the company’s “Handle” bot, first unveiled in 2017.

About “Handle”: It’s a “mobile manipulation robot” designed for the logistics sector. It can autonomously stack and unstack boxes onto and off pallets, and shift them onto conveyor belts. It uses an onboard vision system to track which objects go where, and to judge how to grasp and place each box. It uses a robotic technique called “force control” to nestle each box up against its neighbors. It can handle (excuse the pun) weights of up to 15 kilograms (33 pounds.)

A caveat: Although the technology is impressive, we’re still a long way from it being deployed in an actual warehouse, especially around humans. That would involve a level of complexity that robots haven’t yet mastered. And while the Boston Dynamics videos are always fun, they’re not quite as effortless as they seem. Each one is created with carefully pre-programmed movements and will take many, many takes to get right before it’s shared.

Sign up here to our daily newsletter The Download to get your dose of the latest must-read news from the world of emerging tech

Deep Dive

Artificial intelligence

The inside story of how ChatGPT was built from the people who made it

Exclusive conversations that take us behind the scenes of a cultural phenomenon.

AI is dreaming up drugs that no one has ever seen. Now we’ve got to see if they work.

AI automation throughout the drug development pipeline is opening up the possibility of faster, cheaper pharmaceuticals.

The original startup behind Stable Diffusion has launched a generative AI for video

Runway’s new model, called Gen-1, can change the visual style of existing videos and movies.

GPT-4 is bigger and better than ChatGPT—but OpenAI won’t say why

We got a first look at the much-anticipated big new language model from OpenAI. But this time how it works is even more deeply under wraps.

Stay connected

Illustration by Rose Wong

Get the latest updates from
MIT Technology Review

Discover special offers, top stories, upcoming events, and more.

Thank you for submitting your email!

Explore more newsletters

It looks like something went wrong.

We’re having trouble saving your preferences. Try refreshing this page and updating them one more time. If you continue to get this message, reach out to us at customer-service@technologyreview.com with a list of newsletters you’d like to receive.