To get an idea of progress, here's state of the art 10 years ago. Note that the actuators are pneumatic pistons, not direct drive motors (very hard to control, springy like muscles):
Does anyone know what breakthroughs in control systems have gone into making this possible ?
Are there any papers describing how Boston Dynamics is programming this ? are they hardcoding the backflip from human data and then overlaying some stability code ? or is the backflip entirely generated by the underlying controls ?
Why is the robot wearing Plimsolls? Compliance and/or friction at the contact surface?