Boston Dynamics is making its robot dog available to do new tricks — for companies that can afford it.
Although pricing for leasing a four-legged Spot bot has not been announced, the company has said the robodog is shipped to “select early customers,” CNN reports.
Capable of covering about 5.2 feet per second while running and immune to dust and water, Spot can safely operate in temperatures ranging from -4 to 113 Fahrenheit and is ideally suited for use in construction sites and gas and power installations.
Though the robot is capable of being used in military operations, the company is not interested in their dog being weaponized.
“Fundamentally, we don’t want to see Spot doing anything that harms people, even in a simulated way,” says Michael Perry, VP of business development at Boston Dynamics, told The Verge. “That’s something we’re pretty firm on when we talk to customers.”
In other Boston Dynamics news, the Massachusetts-based firm released a new video of its Atlas robot pulling off some moves that Simone Biles might want to rip off during her next floor routine.
“Atlas uses its whole body — legs, arms, torso — to perform a sequence of dynamic maneuvers that form a gymnastic routine,” the firm says. “We created the maneuvers using new techniques that streamline the development process. First, an optimization algorithm transforms high-level descriptions of each maneuver into dynamically-feasible reference motions. Then Atlas tracks the motions using a model predictive controller that smoothly blends from one maneuver to the next. Using this approach, we developed the routine significantly faster than previous Atlas routines, with a performance success rate of about 80%.”
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