Atlas On a Roll

Boston Dynamics Controls Engineer Xiaoyu (Andy) Wu modified the Atlas humanoid robot by retrofitting its ankle actuators with off-the-shelf scooter wheels to test whole-body reinforcement learning policies under high-torque, continuous-load conditions. The project aimed to close the sim-to-real gap by tuning simulated motor models to match physical hardware and using motion-capture trajectories for training, rather than announcing a commercial product or deployment.