Robert Playter

It's not a legged robot.

So it was our first... It was actually a bit of a...

a commitment from us, a challenge for us, to build a non-balancing robot.

But to do... Well, because it wasn't, you know, it wasn't going to have this balance problem.

And in fact, the very first version of the logistics robot we built was a balancing robot, and that's called Handle.

Oh, it's a beautiful machine.

Yeah, so let me, I love talking about the history of how a handle came about.

Because it connects all of our robots, actually.

I'm gonna start with Atlas.

When we had Atlas getting fairly far along, we wanted to understand, I was telling you earlier, the challenge of the human form is that you have this mass up high.

And balancing that inertia, that mass up high, is its own unique challenge.

And so we started trying to get Atlas to balance standing on one foot, like on a balance beam, using its arms like this.

And you can do this, I'm sure.

I can do this, right?

Like if you're walking a tightrope, how do you do that balance?

So that's sort of controlling the inertia, controlling the momentum of the robot.

We were starting to figure that out on Atlas.

And so our first concept of Handle, which was a robot that was gonna be on two wheels, so it had the balance, but it was gonna have a big long arm so it could reach a box at the top of a truck.

And it needed yet another counterbalance, a big tail, to help it balance while it was using its arm.

So the reason why this robot sort of looks epic, some people said it looked like an ostrich, or maybe an ostrich moving around, was the wheels, it has legs, so it can extend its legs.