James Phang

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Robot Dog: Boston Dynamics Spot

Over the years, a company called Boston Dynamics have been developing robots that have industrial capabilities, such as documenting construction progress to monitoring remote environments. Their advancement in robotics have been well documented and every couple of years their robots become more advanced and able to do more than the previous ones. Boston Dynamics have unveiled their new four-legged robot called SPOT. The robot is available to purchase for $74,500, however only available to US customers.

Video: Spot Launch by Boston Dynamics

Current Uses

SPOT has already been used in hospitals, agriculture, and police work. One example SPOT has been used is during the COVID-19 pandemic. Boston Hospital reached out to Boston Dynamics to ask whether they can use robots to minimise staff exposure to COVID-19. SPOT was equipped with an iPad and two-way radio. This way staff can diagnose patients safely without exposing themselves while providing adequate consultation. In an agricultural environment, SPOT has been used to herd sheep and collect agricultural data for companies to gather information to make food production more efficient and easing the strain of worker shortages. In construction, SPOT can walkthrough sites and capture 360 views of progress.

Specifications

SPOT is powered by Intel Core i5 9th Gen Whiskey Lake CPU, 16GB of RAM, 512GB of storage and runs Ubuntu 18.04 LTS. SPOT is able to go at speeds of 1.6 m/s and is able to climb steps of up to 30cm in height. SPOT have a lot of cameras built in to provide depth information to produce 3D point clouds, which allows the robot to avoid obstacles. The robot can also provide a live video feed to the control tablet. SPOT has an interchangeable battery that lasts for 90 minutes. There are a number of different payloads that Boston Dynamics can provide for SPOT to adapt to different situations.

Future Uses

I hope that the advancement in SPOT will enable more ways to use SPOT, other uses such as humanitarian efforts after natural disasters. SPOT could be sent in to explore areas worst hit and investigate the area before relief workers go in. The wide range of uses will also depend on the adaptors that get developed by Boston Dynamics and the improvement of intelligence. In its current form, it is limited by its battery life, computing power, and sensors. Hopefully, in 10 years’ timethe next iteration of SPOT will be more advancements and more capabilities to do more tasks.

Video: Boston Dynamics Robot Dog! by MKHD