One of Boston Dynamics’ lifelike robots will soon move from show-off objects to commercial products. A quadrupedal robot named Spot is nearly ready to go on sale! The company has not yet set a firm launch date for the commercial version of Spot, although they say it should be available within months and certainly before the end of the year.
Boston Dynamics’ CEO Marc Raibert told The Verge that the company is currently testing Spot in a number of “proof-of-concept” environments, including package delivery and surveying work. He said: “We’re just doing some final tweaks to the design. We’ve been testing them relentlessly.”
Re:MARS
Amazon’s Re:MARS conference in Las Vegas is an event dedicated to advanced robotics, machine learning, and space exploration. Raibert was there representing Boston Dynamics and showing off Spot. On the first evening of the conference, they had a pair of Spot robots mingled with the crowds, overseen by two Boston Dynamics employees controlling the machines using modified gaming tablets.
If you’ve ever seen one of Boston Dynamics’ viral videos you know they often present the robots as apparently self-controlled agents, but it’s well known that the machines generally require human handlers. The only instances when they can navigate environments autonomously is when their surroundings have been mapped out in advance. Otherwise, they don’t decide for themselves where to walk. They can, however, withstand kicks and shoves and keep their balance on tricky terrain, all on their own!
Ease of Use
The demonstrations by the robots’ handlers showed how simple the robots are to control. You can steer the robot as you would any RC car or mechanical toy using a D-pad. A quick tap on the video feed streamed live from the robot’s front-facing camera lets you select a destination for it to walk to; another tap lets you assume control of a robot arm mounted on top of the chassis.
Ambitious Arm Plans
Thanks to that “handy” arm, Spot can be customized by users to complete a range of tasks. This ability enables Boston Dynamics to sell the robot as a “mobility platform” rather than a single-use tool. A Spot robot just mounted with 3D cameras can map environments like construction sites, as well as identify hazards and monitor work progress. And since it is also equipped with a robot arm, it has even greater flexibility, able to open doors and manipulate objects.
Robotic Future
If robots are to work alongside humans in more dynamic environments they have to react as well as humans would to hazards and changing conditions. This is the greatest challenge for even the most advanced robots being created today. For now, Raibert says the company has found some paying customers, including construction companies in Japan who are testing Spot as a way to oversee the progress of work on sites.
“There’s a remarkable number of construction companies we’re talking to,” said Raibert. “But we have some other applications that are very promising — [including] in hostile environments where the cost of having people there is high.”
Hostile environments are exactly the sort of location robots would be ideally suited for. The sort of tasks that are dull, dirty, or too dangerous for humans. Boston Dynamics strives to make its machines so intuitive and reactive that they will be able to toil away in factories or unsafe environments (like disaster zones and nuclear plants) just as well as humans would so that people don’t have to put themselves in danger anymore.
