[ad_1] Last week a lot of people got their first taste of an in-the-wild encounter between organic human life and one of Boston Dynamics’ advanced robots. In Northern Ontario, Canada @bloodtear noticed the Spot robot walking down the street and had an encounter that wouldn’t have been odd if it had been with a real […]
Category: boston dynamics
MIT researchers show how ‘Dr. Spot’ could help diagnose COVID-19
[ad_1] Boston Dynamics’ Spot robots have been used in many creative ways, from surveying a Ford plant in Michigan to herding sheep in New Zealand. Earlier this year, the tech company announced Spot was chipping in to help coronavirus patients — now, we’re seeing the fruits of that work. Boston Dynamics and MIT researchers say […]
Spot and Pepper robots will perform at spectatorless baseball games in Japan
[ad_1] Sports leagues and teams around the world have been filling stadiums with stuffed toys and cardboard cutouts to stand in for fans who can’t watch in person due to the coronavirus pandemic. SoftBank, however, is taking things a step further in an effort to make its Japanese baseball team’s games a lot livelier. The […]
Adam Savage turned Spot the robodog into a creepy rickshaw driver
[ad_1] Like almost everyone who has encounted Spot, his first thought was “can I ride it?” Unfortunately not, given the amount of weight the machine can handle — so for Savage, combining its capabilities with his apparent love for rickshaws was the obvious second choice. Obviously. And getting Spot geared up for the task appears […]
Boston Dynamics gives its robot dog a developer SDK
[ad_1] Until today, only developers in the early adopter program could get the SDK, but now it’s freely available to all as open-source code. However, developers will still need to become early adopters if they want to lease a robot to test their code, Boston Dynamics said. That way, they can “create custom methods of […]
Massachusetts police have been quietly testing a robot dog
[ad_1] The machine saw use in two real-world incidents in addition to training, the police said. It’s not clear how autonomous Spot was, but the police said they didn’t customize the robot canine’s software or weaponize it. Company chief Marc Raibert showed the Massachusetts State Police using Spot at TechCrunch Sessions: Robotics in April (see […]
Humanity is well on its way to a real-life Terminator uprising
[ad_1] This research spans academia, militaries (though it can be difficult to suss out the actual breakthroughs from government propaganda), and private enterprise. Perhaps the most well known privately-owned robotics developer is Boston Dynamics, makers of the Atlas. You may remember this bipedal robot from September when it showed off its uncanny parkour abilities, which […]
Boston Dynamics’ SpotMini robots are strong enough to haul a box truck
[ad_1] Boston Dynamics built the all-electric SpotMini as a quadruped robot that weighs 66 pounds. The machine can run for up to 90 minutes, depending on what it’s doing — its battery life is probably a lot shorter than an hour-and-a-half when it’s hauling trucks, though. It has 3D vision cameras, as well as a […]
Boston Dynamics’ acquisition will help its robots see in 3D
[ad_1] Kinema is a Menlo Park-based company that uses deep learning to give robotic arms the 3D vision they need to locate and move boxes. It can recognize different products and handle boxes of different sizes, even if they’re not perfectly level. With this purchase, Boston Dynamics now has the software it needs to make […]
Boston Dynamics’ new Handle robot heads to the warehouse
[ad_1] When we first met Handle the wheeled robot was hopping and jumping to show off its agility, but a new demo video from Boston Dynamics is much more practical. In this one, larger Handle units work autonomously to move boxes around inside a a warehouse environment. According to the company, the boxes weigh about […]