I am not sure why creating synthetic view of the environment should not have any value.
When you plan your path to go somewhere you can imagine how it would look like based on what you know and when new information comes in that contradicts it it gets updated to what it's really like.
The robot could do the same thing. It could create images/views of what path it wants to take and start acting on it without knowing the real situation yet.
Granted, the 3D representation that atlas also provides is probably more useful than just an image but the idea remains the same, we are giving robots a kind of idea how the current world around them most likely is based on previously learned data of other locations
Comments
I am not sure why creating synthetic view of the environment should not have any value.
When you plan your path to go somewhere you can imagine how it would look like based on what you know and when new information comes in that contradicts it it gets updated to what it's really like.
The robot could do the same thing. It could create images/views of what path it wants to take and start acting on it without knowing the real situation yet.
Granted, the 3D representation that atlas also provides is probably more useful than just an image but the idea remains the same, we are giving robots a kind of idea how the current world around them most likely is based on previously learned data of other locations