The upgraded Boston Dynamics Handle robot can stack robots quickly in a warehouse setting.
Video screenshot by Bonnie Burton/CNET
Boston Dynamics builds robots that can run, dance and even do parkour.
Now the company has perfected its Handle robot so it can stack heavy boxes as if they were blocks in an extreme version of Tetris.
The original Handle robot was created in 2017 as a research robot. It stands 6.5 feet (2 meters) tall, travels at 9 mph (14.5 kph) and jumps 4 feet (1.2 meters) vertically.
This new version of Handle robot has been upgraded as a mobile manipulation robot designed for warehouse tasks and manual labor.
The robot can quickly stack multiple heavy boxes on a pallet, as well as unload them, according to Boston Dynamics.
Handle’s onboard vision system tracks marked pallets, and finds individual boxes for grasping and stacking. As Handle puts a box onto a pallet, it uses force control to stack the boxes up against each other.
The boxes seen in a video posted on Thursday weigh about 11 pounds (5 kilograms). But Handle is designed to lift heavier boxes up to 33 pounds (15 kilograms).
This upgraded Handle can also work with pallets that are 48 inches (1.2 meters) deep and 68 inches (1.7 meters) tall.