Spot, the bright yellow dog-like robot by Boston Dynamics, got a significant upgrade in a launch held on YouTube earlier this week.
While the star of the show was Spot Enterprise, an enhanced version of the earlier Spot, Boston Dynamics also announced the Spot Arm and Scout, a “web-based teleoperating software,” which allows Spot to be controlled over networks, either locally or over the Internet.
“It took us many years of development to get Spot capable of walking through complicated rugged terrain that have been difficult for traditional robots,” said Michael Perry of Boston Dynamics. With the toughest problem solved, the company will now address making Spot truly useful for remote and often dangerous operations, such as around radiation and chemical spills, and exploring mine shafts or oil and gas operations, including offshore oil rigs.
Off Leash
Old Spot had been pressed into service at the Chernobyl nuclear disaster site measuring radiation levels in October 2020, but a human operator was still required nearby and was therefore likely exposed to radiation. Old Spot was, in effect, required to be kept on a short leash—always in view—with its owner (operator) commanding it with a tablet nearby. New Spot in unleashed. It can be operated from far away—away from radiation and other dangers.
This is the most significant enhancement to Spot. The robotic service dog is now usable in environments that are too hazardous for humans.
While the robotic dog continues to give many people the creeps—engineers know the mastery of motion over all broken terrain is genius. Here is a robot that can go up and down steps, across jagged, blown-up ruins, and other difficult and dangerous terrain, on its own, like a real dog. Do you know how hard it is to program that? And Boston Dynamics has improved the dog’s design. Here we have a dog that can turn a doorknob and get through a doorway on its way to inspect a gauge. Try training a pug to do that.
Extra Sensory Perception
Robot Spot has all the useful senses of dogs—and more. Dogs may see in only limited color, but Spot is outfitted with a 4K RGB video camera and an imaging depth sensor. That allows it to grip handles and know when to focus and zoom in on gauges. Spot can also see beyond visible light with an infrared sensor. It can hear (with a microphone). We know it can speak (using speakers). It can feel (with touch sensors). However, Spot’s sense of smell is not up to its natural counterpart. It can only smell a few gases, and that only with the help of an accessory. Still, that makes Spot useful in detecting gas leaks around process plants.
Spot Enterprise can capture large datasets for companies seeking digital transformation that were previously stymied by challenging and dangerous conditions for humans, says Michael Perry, vice president of business development for Boston Dynamics, pointing to BP, National Grid and Merck, which have already used Spot for this purpose.
Even traditional robots have struggled with difficult conditions, says Perry, as they were not as mobile as Spot. Spot is shown negotiating construction sites, ducking under pipes, and going up and down steps without much hesitation—an impossible task for wheeled or even tracked robots.
Woodside, Australia’s largest provider of natural gas, is using Spot to monitor and inspect its equipment, reducing the need for putting people at risk, according to Perry. Spot Enterprise will ease the data collection process with automated patrols and inspection tasks.
House Trained
Spot carries only enough batteries to operate for about 90 minutes, so the key to it working for longer periods while unattended is its ability to charge itself. We see Spot sniffing out a nearby docking station and lowering itself gently onto it. Spot can be recharged and ready for action in two hours. Spot can also relieve itself—of data, that is. Spot Enterprise’s dock has an Ethernet connection to offload large datasets.
Situational Awareness
“Scout lets operators control their fleet of Spots from a virtual control room,” said Boston Dynamics Scout engineering lead Chris Bentzel. “Teleoperators can see and review data in real time, or follow along on the robot’s missions, all from your browser.”
Inspection is made easier as tasks such as “Check Gauge” and “Read Meter” are buttons on Spot’s console. Spot can interpret the button press as the movements it needs to make so that it can get close enough to what it perceives as a gauge of meter from a rectangular area you provide, or zoom in with a 30x optical zoom lens.
You can show Spot a doorknob and it will know how to grasp and turn it—and even prevent the door from closing with its body as it walks through the doorway. Surprisingly, you must tell it what side of the door is hinged. Shouldn’t it be able to guess the hinge is on the side opposite the doorknob?
Guiding Spot is as easy as playing a video game. You use a game controller with a joystick to control the robot’s forward and lateral movements. You can tell it where you want it to go from where it is located to a point you pick. Spot will figure out how to get there, walking around obstacles if it needs to.
The ability to detect objects and react to them is key to any self-driving robot. Spot may make the process look simple, but it must have taken Boston Dynamics a million lines of code. The company is rightfully proud of Spot’s situational awareness, its innate ability to negotiate stairs (after turning on a “stairs mode”), discern risers, understand metal grating as steppable, go around poles and holes, and so on—all from a video feed (machine vision)—is artificial intelligence in the truest sense.
Spot does not seem to have a sense of proprioception, the awareness of joint position, or kinesthesia, a sense of joint movement. These are senses that still elude engineers programming robots. Users can make Spot duck if they think an overhead pipe is going to knock its arm off.
I’ve Fallen but I Can Get Up
With a center of mass high above its tall legs, Spot has a little fall risk. However, the robot seems to be able to recover quite easily without help, simply at the touch of a “self-right” button on the Scout interface. Spot will get up from being knocked over and get into a seated position to resume its mission.
Should Spot wander out of Wi-Fi coverage, it will sense the dead zone and backtrack to the last point where it could still hear its master, so to speak.
Worried about Spot getting hacked into? We got this, says Boston Dynamics. Spot can roam over a VPN or a private network, if needed, rather than on the Internet. Access to Scout can be restricted and data transmission can be encrypted.
Armed and Ready
We see videos of two Spots using their arms to twirl a jump rope while a third Spot jumps over it. We see another video of the arm on Spot’s predecessor, Big Dog, flinging 14 kg cinderblocks a distance 5 meters. The YouTube audience wonders if Boston Dynamics intends to displace nannies or pit bulls with these skills, but Al Rizzi, Boston Dynamics’ chief scientist, knows engineers will appreciate that the skills demonstrated represent difficult problems solved. The 8 kg articulated arm with gripper extends to 1 m long and can move up to 10 m/s—fast enough to let Spot act quickly and is strong enough to pick up 5 kg. Throwing cinderblocks demonstrates coordination between the arm and body, with feedback loops and controls that provide stability, even with large dynamic forces that would topple Spot. Why mount the arm on the robot’s back rather than out Spot’s front in a more dog-like fashion, another wonders? The back mounting helps with Spot’s balance and stability.
While Spot comes trained with a few commands (to right itself, inspect a gauge, turn a valve, traverse steps), owners can train it to do far more. Boston Dynamics will ship the Spot Arm with an API so that customers can develop new applications for Spot.
Mission Possible
You can expect to see Spots in all sorts of hazardous duty—at least where a human life is worth more than the cost of a robot. Boston Dynamics is not revealing the cost of Spot Enterprise, but the earlier, base model Spot was listed at $74,500. That’s with no arm, LiDAR or other options.
The robot has already been spotted (get it?) in blue paint at the NYPD and the Massachusetts State Police (in black like Black Mirror). This has not gone unnoticed by the ACLU and civil rights agencies that are already worried about excessive force and the militarization of police forces.
Does It Bite?
Boston Dynamics was emphasizing Spot’s applications in hazardous sites, but we see Spot popping up on security patrol at data centers, airports, military installations, and so on, where round-the-clock human security would invariably cost more per year in the West than the price of a single Spot. A robotic watchdog bounding out of the dark to greet you is sure to make you regret your trespass. Wouldn’t Spot make the perfect bomb disarming robot? No mention was made of Spot in police and military use in the YouTube event, however.
An industrial setting or hazardous waste site keeps Spot from interacting with the public while the company’s videos go viral, making robotic Spot as well-known now as was the Spot of See Spot Run picture books. Spot has been used sparingly around the general public. One Spot patrols a park in Singapore, ordering people to keep a safe social distance. It’s use at an airport (in Denver) was behind the scenes.
The idea of a robot in public is bound to be fraught with risk, both real and imagined. As many as 1 out of every 11 people have a crippling fear of dogs (cynophobia), but the risk of a robot dog like Spot is more imagined than real. Real Spot can only travel at walking speed, is unarmed, and has more to fear from those who realize it is harmless and then try to kick it over. It is hardly the unstoppable killing machine portrayed in an unforgettable episode of Black Mirror that chases down cars, is lethal, and lasts forever. Real or imagined, it is still a negative perception to be reckoned with. Spot remains a creepy robot dog to the public at large. If Boston Dynamics is to realize the true market potential of a robotic service robot, as its parent company, Hyundai, has stated (see below), it must do more than paint Spot bright yellow.
For now, Boston Dynamics continues to market Spot to the entertainment industry, which will surely entertain us by showing Spot’s dark side.
About Boston Dynamics
“The reception of Spot by our customers has been great,” said Robert Playter, CEO of Boston Dynamics. The company has sold 400 Spots already. As the unaccessorized base model sells for $74,500, this would have generated at least $30 million in sales. Boston Dynamics no longer publishes prices of the robot on its website, so the cost of the new generation of Spot is unknown.
Boston Dynamics was spun out of MIT in 1992. It was acquired by Google when Google was on its robotics kick, but Google lost interest in robotics and sold Boston Dynamics to the Japanese investment firm SoftBank.
South Korea’s Hyundai Motor Group announced in December 2020 that it would buy a controlling interest (80%) in Boston Dynamics for $1.1 billion. Hyundai has a long-term goal of developing humanoid robots for sophisticated services such as caregiving for patients at hospitals. The company was recently featured on this site for its collaboration with Autodesk on Elevate, a four-legged walking vehicle that can carry passengers or patients, like an ambulance. We expect Elevate’s wobbly and ungainly legs to be replaced with the far more sure-footed legs like Spot’s.