Another day, another video from Boston Dynamics. The Atlas robot has recently been the star of many videos on Boston Dynamics’ YouTube channel. Atlas is the humanoid robot that has autonomous limbs and can climb stairs and navigate obstacles. The latest video from Boston Dynamics shows that Atlas can now traverse rocky terrain and balance itself to remain upright despite having considerable lateral weight.

Atlas was developed as one of Boston Dynamics’ entries into the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s Robotics Challenge. According to the DARPA website, the contest is offering $2 million in prizes to “whomever can help push the state-of-the-art in robotics beyond today’s capabilities in support of the DoD’s disaster recovery mission.” The goal of the challenge is to create a robot that can navigate and endure environments that are extremely dangerous for people, such as combat or radioactive zones.

Boston Dynamics is working on seven robots to enter into DARPA’s challenge, including this four-legged monster that can run you down. The challenge began in April 2012 and will come to a head this December.

So, Boston Dynamics has been working on Atlas for 18 months, and giving the robot the ability to walk across a pile of rocks was just par for the course. But knowing that this was just another day at the office for the Boston Dynamics team doesn’t make this video any less incredible.