Boston Dynamics’ Marc Raibert shows off a close-to-production Spot Mini.
This is uh Lily Cohen and beta what Number is it the 24 I can’t quite see 26 So if you could actually start by Walking through this is close to Production unit if you can start by Walking through what’s new about this Spot many you know we’ve we’ve Redesigned many of the components to Make it more reliable to make the skins Work better and to protect it if it does Fall this robot has I’m going to go out There and pointed a few things this has Cameras it has two sets on the front and One on each side and one on the back so It can see in all directions I gotta say – it looks a little more banged up I Think that I’ve seen a lot of your robot So it looks like it’s kind of thing Through the wringer okay I mean we’ve Been testing these things relentlessly As I say they usually go through many Hours of of testing a week they do fall Still this is also designed use these Are like roof racks so that when you Build your special platform like maybe The previous speakers will make a a deck That you can take a drone off from and They’ll just attach that there’s Connections for for an Ethernet so that They can communicate and then we have Our IP API this also has a special radio On it it has built-in Wi-Fi but for an Event like this where you all have your Phones out and you’re texting and stuff
Wi-Fi can be unreliable so we’re using a Spread spectrum radio and of course it’s Got the arm why don’t we show off the Arm one of the great things about a Mobile robot like this with an arm is That the workspace is essentially Infinite and the motion of the base Contributes to the motion of the arm if You have a fixed arm they’re usually Very limited to what they can do and of Course we’ve coordinated the arm with The body so Lily is actually just Driving the hand I know you think it’s a Head but it’s really a hand and she can Drive it for and aft and sideways and Now she’s put it into a mode where the Hand is stabilized in space we love to Call it I love to call this chickenhead Mode and really people have the Capability of stabilizing their Manipulators and their While the rest of it moves and it really Facilitates the ability to handle Objects and work in the world as the Robot travels around in the world can You talk a little bit about the control Mechanism so this has onboard computers That interpreting the data from the Vision they also interpret data from the The load cells in the in the link so it Can feel the environment it’s balancing Itself I won’t kick it we’re not allowed To do that anymore but I’ll show that It’s stable and if I push on it if I
Push hard enough it’ll step and isn’t You know it’s pretty robust if it does Fall over it can get back up so there’s The low level stabilization in the robot And then it has vision that it can use To negotiate obstacles like this block And here Lily I want you to run me down With the robot they won’t do it huh I Wouldn’t promise that it’s never gonna Run into anybody but it’s using its Vision to treat me as an obstacle and Then even though Lily’s just saying go Straight ahead it goes around and later On where I think after the show closes We’re gonna demo this out front you can Drive it and see you know you can see if You can run one of us down with it if You want and then on top of that we have Navigation software that can Autonomously navigate around space and Eventually you guys will all be writing Apps that run in and interact with the Controls on the robot so what’s the What’s the purpose that of having it Mainly controlled because it seems like The vast majority of the time it’s going To be moving around autonomously I Thought I don’t know there’s many people Who have applications so there’s the Police application where they really Want to drive it although again the Autonomy is always running at a low Level we have people who want to do gas And oil applications where you’re at it
In the oil rig or something like that And they’re happy to have a person in The loop they just don’t want to have The person out on the oil rig and we Other energy applications where it Doesn’t really need to be completely Autonomous in the fact that there’s no One there and then we have lots of Applications where autonomy And I think the kinds of paradigms used I hope will unfold as we get the world Building on top of this we want it to be Like the Android of robots where people Are developing their own apps at the Android of androids the Android of Androids yeah
