Cited on HN 4 times, 2020–2021, never outright recommendedscore 0
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026
Used as a go-to demonstration of how far dynamic robot locomotion has come.
Boston Dynamics shows its Atlas humanoid robot performing a gymnastics and parkour routine, using optimization-generated motions and a model predictive controller.
“Here's Boston Dynamic's robot doing Parkour and gymnastics” (HN, 2020)
This is... wrong? Scratching a face is a matter of fine motor control. [1] is an example from 2011 which did this, as well as face shaving. Walking is slightly tricky because it's such a dynamic system, but is now human level[2], and there was never really any question that it would be possible. On the other hand, the state of the art in Go systems before Alpha Go (the one trained off games, not Alpha Zero) couldn't beat competent amateurs. No one had really considered the learn-from-zero-knowledge approach of Alpha Zero even for easier games like chess. [1] [link] [2] [this video]
Yes. Here's Boston Dynamic's robot doing Parkour and gymnastics: [this video] It's not national level gymnastics but it's better co-ordinated than most humans.
>>> We know this phenomenon from everyday life. Most of us are experts on walking. However, if we try to articulate how we walk, we certainly give a description that does not capture the skills involved in walking. All the article is based on statements like the previous one. Scientifically is possible to nullify it with a counterargument. [1] Boston dynamics Atlas. [link] [2] Boston dynamics parkour. [this video] QED.
Counterexample to claim that walking skill cannot be articulated.
Video list and Hacker News comment labels from HackerTube (prompted by @karpathy), released under ODC-By 1.0, built on the open-index/hacker-news archive. Hacker News data is provided by Y Combinator; comments remain the work of their authors. Video titles, channel names and thumbnails belong to their creators and are shown via YouTube. HackerTube Watch is an unofficial edition. Data export of 2026-10-31.
Plays via YouTube's privacy-enhanced embed
4 Hacker News comments
From the HN archive; up to 20 kept per video, favoring different commenters. Recommendations first.