By Evan Ackerman and Erico Guizzo

We love robot competitions, and the only bad thing about them is that we don’t have the time (and, er, travel budget) to cover them all. The biggest robotics event happening this week was RoboCup, in Hefei, China, and we have some videos of that for you. But first, let’s watch a 150-kilogram robot getting kicked, shall we?

Warner, the WPI-CMU Atlas, was the only robot that didn’t fall or need a reset at the DARPA Robotics Challenge Finals. In fact, the team was “thrillednot to be included” in this compilation. The video below shows their “robust lateral balance” practice, including a human “interacting” with an operating Atlas, which is something we had never seen before.  …[Read more]