Boston Dynamics' Atlas robot failing at parkour is strangely humbling

YouTube YouTube
Watch On

We knew the Boston Dynamics robots could dance, but this is something else. Now, the company's much loved Atlas robot has learned to bust some gnarly parkour moves, backflips and all (above), but there's a pretty sensational blooper reel to go along with it (further down). 

I'm not sure whether to laugh or cry right now, but these outtakes of Atlas falling flat on its arse (via Futurism) are sure to awaken some flavour of emotion for you—be it joyous or fearful.

It took a month of training to turn Atlas into the hardcore parkour star it is today. Just as a babe learns to walk, its newfound proficiency was underpinned by countless tumbles. Each fall helps the AI build a more concrete understanding of the course and how best to conquer it.

After all that hard work and dedication, it's time to sit back and reap the benefits. Among which sits this incredible outtakes video, cut from a longer video on the Boston Dynamics Youtube channel, and tweeted by science communicator Kyle Hill. Enjoy. 

Your next upgrade

(Image credit: Future)

Best CPU for gaming: the top chips from Intel and AMD
Best graphics card: your perfect pixel-pusher awaits
Best SSD for gaming: get into the game ahead of the rest

Earlier this month, we saw a new breed of AI pretty much ace the Blade Runner Voight-Kampff empathy test, and Atlas doing parkour really takes the biscuit for me. It's just another example of how quickly AI is adapting to the strange human-made world it's confronted with. Hiccups are to be expected, of course, as with any tech project—not least one that involves highly mobile artificial intelligence.

So, AI takes another leap toward infiltrating the fabric of our everyday lives. The latest advancements mean AI can be your conversational partner, dance partner, and now even parkour partner. And you know Atlas will end up better than us.

With Elon Musk's plans for the Tesla bot surfacing, it seems the age of artificially intelligent butlers will soon be upon us. But the bloopers here show there's still a long way to go before we get them right.

Katie Wickens
Hardware Writer

Screw sports, Katie would rather watch Intel, AMD and Nvidia go at it. Having been obsessed with computers and graphics for three long decades, she took Game Art and Design up to Masters level at uni, and has been rambling about games, tech and science—rather sarcastically—for four years since. She can be found admiring technological advancements, scrambling for scintillating Raspberry Pi projects, preaching cybersecurity awareness, sighing over semiconductors, and gawping at the latest GPU upgrades. Right now she's waiting patiently for her chance to upload her consciousness into the cloud.

Read more
A Unitree Go1 robot dog doing a "handstand" at CES 2025
I saw a tiny robot dog do a handstand at CES 2025 and I recorded it for your amusement
A bony sinewy robot that is white with no face
I am begging you not to watch this ghostly white 'faceless, anatomically accurate' robot dangling from wires and silently thrashing its sinewy limbs
A robot having its face pulled off
If you're trying to convince me your 'companionship' robot is 'lifelike', maybe don't rip her face off in the demo video
A robot vacuum with an arm holding a ball while a cat watches
They've started putting arms onto robot vacuums, so we're closer to either getting our own R2D2 or being strangled in our sleep
assassin's creed shadow naoe
We asked two parkour athletes to rate the realism of Assassin's Creed's acrobatics, and a surprising 'crime against parkour' might actually be one of the most realistic things they saw
An artist’s illustration of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope revealing, in the infrared, a population of small main-belt asteroids.
GPUs powering AI will probably be the end of us all but at least they're being used to find small city smashing asteroids before they do
Latest in Hardware
MSI RTX 5070 Ti Gaming Trio OC Plus graphics card under a red light
This MSI Afterburner file unlocks 36 Gbps RTX 50-series memory overclocks for, y'know, the few people that actually own a card
A Steam Deck with SteamOS running in desktop mode.
A new and improved desktop experience just landed on Steam Deck and SteamOS is readying 'support for non-Steam Deck handhelds'
The Cherry Xtrfy K4V2 TKL gaming keyboard on top of a mouse pad depicting a nebula. The keyboard is grey with red accent keys, a grey braided wire, and the bright RGB lights switched on.
Cherry Xtrfy K4V2 TKL review
A "sensor-actuator–coupled gustatory interface chemically connecting virtual and real environments for remote tasting," or essentially a virtual reality tongue in an artificial mouth
Would you like to taste fish soup in VR? Me neither, but this electronic tongue does it anyway
Razer DeathAdder V3 Pro gaming mouse on a blue background
The DeathAdder V3 Pro is currently so cheap it's put the usually more affordable HyperSpeed version out of a job
MSI RTX 5090 Suprim SOC graphics card on a grey background with a gradient
MSI RTX 5090 Suprim SOC review
Latest in News
Three sheep with big guns in Palworld.
It was 'super popular to hate Palworld' after launch, says community manager: 'A lot of companies might crumble under the threats, under the pressure'
Palworld Ancient Civilization Parts - Grizzbolt with a minigun
'It was a very depressing day': Palworld community manager reveals studio's reaction to Nintendo lawsuit
CS 1.6 remade in CS: Legacy.
A gorgeous ground-up remake of Counter-Strike 1.6 is on its way to Steam, and one of the game's original creators says 'it really gives me old vibes'
Portal P3 pinball table
There's a new Portal game and it costs $12,500
MrBeast posing in front of a stack of cashing, promoting Beast Games season 2
Beast Games opens casting for season 2: MrBeast lost a ton of money on season 1 but apparently not enough that he won't do it again
Ark: Lost Colony teaser still.
Ark 2 is still on: The next Ark expansion 'leads into the events of Ark 2,' says Studio Wildcard