This Boston Dynamics Robot Has a New Job in Photography
Many will be familiar with Atlas, the humanoid robot created by Boston Dynamics that can run, do cartwheels, and even dance. But photographers may want to pay attention to its latest trick: learning to operate cameras.
Boston Dynamics’ Atlas recently teamed up with marketing company WPP to film for a car ad in collaboration with Canon and NVIDIA. Described as a “future use case for humanoid robotics on set,” Atlas can lift heavy camera gear at awkward angles while maintaining balance.
The director of the shoot Brett Danton says that Atlas can “fill a gap of repeatable shots and long repeatable shots.” He contrasts Atlas with robotic camera arms that are “very heavy” and work on tracks, while the humanoid can potentially go to different, non-studio locations — even entering territories not usually accessed by human operators.
“There are often times on sets where you might want to capture something that’s potentially dangerous where you want to send the robot to capture a close-up on a volcano or down into a cave,” adds Vatche Arabian, the senior marketing manager of Boston Dynamics.
However, Arabian stresses that robots such as Atlas are not there to replace human creatives but rather “augment what’s already taking place.” He compares it to the way “drones opened up all kinds of different ways to capture stories of the world.”
There is one snag: Atlas must be trained on vast amounts of data to understand the environment it is in. That is NVIDIA’s role in this exercise, its Cosmos AI is a set of world foundation models that helps developers create physically accurate virtual worlds that mimic the real world. These simulations serve as digital training grounds for robots, allowing them to learn and practice before being deployed to a real-life set.
Mashable notes that human crew members remain indispensable for integrating robotics into the filmmaking process. Mashable also says that the use of robotic camera operators isn’t new since precision camera robots like the Bolt High-Speed Cinebot has been used in plenty of productions to get a shot that is difficult to achieve with a human hand. The arms — which can make precise movements at high speed — are often used for repeatable shots and action sequences.
