Boston Dynamics will start selling a first-generation universal robot which is like a robot dog. Spot is an agile mobile robot that you can customize for a wide range of applications. The base platform provides rough-terrain mobility, 360 degree obstacle avoidance, and various levels of navigation, remote control and autonomy. You can customize Spot by adding specialized sensors, software and other payloads. Early customers are already testing Spot to monitor construction sites, provide remote inspection at gas, oil and power installations, and in public safety. Spot is in mass production and currently shipping to select early adopters.
* It can carry up to 14 kilograms.
* It has two payload ports.
* It moves at 3 miles per hour and can move for 90 minutes on a single charge. It has 4.5 miles of range
* The battery pack can be swapped out
* It can move over difficult terrain
* there is a robotic arm attachment for opening doors and other tasks
The video shows how it can be useful in an industrial, factory, construction or warehouse setting.
Boston Dynamics Has a Gymnastic and Pakor Capable Human Form Robot
Boston Dynamics Atlas robot is capable of tumbling and jumping. Atlas is not for sale but it demonstrates the agility of their robots.
SOURCES- Boston Dynamics
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Was it Fahrenheit 451 that had a robot dog as a guard dog turned assassin?
Duck tape (the original spelling, looking it up), cable ties, and a solenoid to activate the trigger.
I would have it activate from an audio input when someone screams the word “gun!”.
If you have to ask you probably cant afford it.
Word on the street, it’s “less than the price of a car”, anywhere from Tata Nano to Rolls Royce Sweptail money.
What is the use case for this thing, besides an heiress ersatz chiwawa or gun arm loaded up with some neutral net trained up with a few subjective millennia of game play on “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2”.
Duct tape?
I’d like one, to walk the dog that I would buy at the same time.
Why do you think the robotic suitcases are stupid? A larger porter makes sense after luggage check in, or if you have a lot of luggage, but robotic suitcases make sense before check in if you only have one or two them. It frees up your hands for other things, saves physical energy, and makes you less likely to forget your suitcase somewhere. Granted, it can be a little annoying if it gets in other people’s way, but it’s not much different from a child following you around.
For the larger porters, I would say a robotic cart (of various sizes, depending on when and where it’s going to be used) makes more sense than a legged robot.
Forget that swapping station, I like Norfintork’s idea better only with a twist – let the robots change one another’s batteries; they are general purpose & should get it right. Should work in an industrial setup w a decent fleet.
The small quadruped form factor actually does limit what this thing can actually do though. Basically observation duties, and minor cargo. Maybe someone can make a go of using it as a suitcase porter at airports, rather than those stupid bluetooth linked robotic suitcases that chase travellers?
Leaving a charging station to the parts/ecosystem makers as part of their platform push?
Unfortunately they don’t have an open price, just a “Contact Sales” link.
They need room for payloads and attachments on the top. Having the battery access at the top could limit a lot of what you can do. It makes perfect sense to me to have the battery swap on the bottom.
You can attach a handgun to a roomba.
Can I attach a handgun?
All it actually requires, (besides the battery being accessible to the arm.) is a second set of battery cables and diodes in the right place. Connect the new battery before disconnecting the old.
I should say that I’m designing a hobby robot to build with my son right now, and hot swap batteries are part of the plan; Multiple batteries feeding a common super cap bank through buck up regulators, so the operating voltage won’t be influenced by the state of the batteries until they’re dry.
Maybe an automated battery swapping station of sorts would do which has the advantage of not increasing the burden on each robot in the fleet with the required hotswap-specific hw&sw, just the homing capability which I think is already built-in.
Hot swap as in:
Step 1: remove old battery
Step 2: insert new battery
Right after Step 1 that arm doesn’t have any power in order to exec Step 2. Which calls for a small aux power supply, possibly complicating power management & slightly increasing the mass. Dunno if it’s worth the effort for industrial applications where the operators tend to be a bit more competent on avg than in the home appliances market, i think.
price?
Agreed, it should have been a hot swap battery the robot could handle on its own. That’s painfully obvious. I think they’ve got this targeted at applications with relatively low duty cycles, where the robot can spend half its time sitting in a charging station.
Cool, but could they have made the battery change any harder? It should have been on the top of the body. For that matter, why not give it the ability to change its own battery? Leave the battery on the bottom, have it “squat” over a charging bot that pulls the old battery and pops in a new one. Still want one as is!