Have humanoid robots taken the leap from production lines to producing films? Boston Dynamics’ Atlas humanoid robot is currently behind the camera, assisting with film productions.

Robots in Film Production

The project is the result of a collaboration between Boston Dynamics and WPP, a British creative transformation company. The robot’s precision camera handling capabilities allow it to capture shots while emulating Boston Dynamics’ overall goal of using robotics to keep human operators out of hazardous environments.

“For general purpose, robotic platforms like Atlas need a large amount of training data to operate inside a new use case. Sometimes training data doesn’t exist. So it’s difficult to get hold of, and then you need to generate it synthetically,” said Perry Nightingale, SVP for Creative AI, WPP.

Claimed to be the world’s most dynamic humanoid robot, Atlas was designed for real-world applications with an advanced control system. To train Atlas, the team used Nvidia Cosmos, a set of world foundation models that helps create AI videos or imagery for robotics.

“We can take simulations of complex environment from Nvidia Universe such as film sets and make photorealistic, synthetic training data in Nvidia Cosmos,” said Rocio Rey, creative technologist, WPP.

Atlas is particularly useful for long, repeatable, or awkward shots because the robot can lift up to approximately 44 pounds and hold items in an uncomfortable position while maintaining its balance. This would alleviate both scheduling limitations and physical strain on human filmmakers.

This type of technology could also enable filmmakers to capture shots in areas that are too dangerous for humans to go, like filming around a volcano.

“It was amazing to see Atlas working behind the camera for the first time, it was a dream come true moment,” said Enah Lee, creative technologist at WPP.