Atlas, the humanoid robot that dazzled followers for more than a decade with its outdoor running, awkward dancing and acrobatic back flips, has powered down. On Wednesday, Boston Dynamics, the company that created it, announced the arrival of the next generation of humanoid robots — a fully electric robot (also named Atlas) for real-world commercial and industrial applications. For anyone worried about what would happen to the hydraulic bipedal machine (a robot home? A spokesman, Nikolas Noel, said that retirement would mean that the Atlas would move to its “robot retirement home,” which is to say that it would be “sitting in our office lobby museum” with other decommissioned robots. The old Atlas was used to research full-body mobility and to explore what was possible in robotics, Mr. Noel said.

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Persons: Nikolas Noel, Noel Organizations: Boston Dynamics, Defense, Research Projects Agency, Pentagon