The Atlas Robot Is Dead. Long Live the Atlas Robot

Old robots never die, they simply fade away. This week, Boston Dynamics said adieu to HD Atlas, the human-ish robot that debuted over a decade ago. And then promptly introduced its replacement. For years, Atlas has scared us silly with cutesy dance moves and parkour flips that we just knew would one day lead to our annihilation as a species. The robopocalypse never came, of course, and Atlas just got cuter the more it fell off boxes, bounced off tables, rolled down grass hills, and jived to Dirty Dancing tracks.