Schaft's latest robot looks positively interstellar

Alphabet's intent to get rid of Boston Dynamics hasn't affected its other robotics programs, from the looks of it. On Japan's New Economic Summit stage, the Alphabet X lab (formerly Google X) subsidiary SCHAFT unveiled a new bipedal unit that's capable of climbing stairs, carrying a loaded barbell on its "head" unit, laterally stepping through a row of seats at a soccer stadium and even maintaining balance when a section of pipe is placed under its feel. IEEE Spectrum writes that this was part of former Google exec Andy Rubin's keynote at the event, but that the debut wasn't part of a product announcement or "indication of a specific product roadmap."

So it looks like the clip of the anonymous bot navigating a rocky beach in the video below is indicative of the project's lonely future. But hey, maybe director Christopher Nolan can put it to use in a sequel for Interstellar -- the biped strikes awfully similar that movie's monolithic robot companion, TARS.