Atlas Robot’s New Hand May Outperform Humanlike Designs

Today, Boston Dynamics is announcing a redesigned hand for its Atlas robot. The previous generation could do some crazy superhuman things with its three fingers, but it was never intended for mass production in the tens or hundreds of thousands. Switching from research hardware to a scalable product makes previously ignorable questions suddenly paramount: How can you make a hand that does everything you need it to do but is also rugged and reliable and cost-effective? It’s questions like t