Boston Dynamics’ robotic dog Spot once again dances to the beat of BTS’s hit “Permission to Dance”, this time around. They are a popular South Korean boy band, according to a new video posted by Boston Dynamics.
Hyundai, the South Korean-based automaker, bought Boston Dynamics last year for $1.1 billion.
The goal of the spot dog robot
Robotics technology has advanced dramatically over the past few years. Boston Dynamics robots are highly advanced, as they can dance, perform gymnastics, run, and even participate in everyday activities such as opening doors and lifting objects.
Boston Dynamics reports that the ultimate goal of the dog-like robot is to use it to keep people safe and make their lives easier. “We believe that advanced mobile robotics will provide tremendous benefits to society,” the company said.
The dancing robots show amazing grace and precision in the video, dancing in coordination and synchronization and showing off their skills, but is this the purpose of Spot Robots?
At its Innovation Center in London, IBM showcased many of the emerging technologies it is currently developing, from artificial intelligence and automation to robotics and quantum computing.
Among the technologies on display were Spot, a four-legged Boston Dynamics robot, and IBM was showcasing AI innovations and technologies that have been incorporated into the Spot system.
Other techniques
Interest in Spot robots has expanded since its commercialization, with new applications in a variety of industries becoming part of its appeal. However, while Spot was designed to take over data collection tasks rather than workers in potentially dangerous situations, the problem remained that human intervention was still required to analyze the data.
To solve this challenge, IBM added AI solutions to provide live analytics, and integrated its core systems to permanently remove the human factor from data collection.
With the help of IBM technologies, Spot can interpret what it sees through an array of cameras and sensors, going a step beyond identifying problems to actively pursuing corrective actions.
Stephen Burton, IBM’s chief account technical officer, says Boston Dynamics has really reached the point where their design has secured yet another set of technologies to take to the wider industry.
Amazing missions
Boston Dynamics is known for its popular videos showing its robots doing amazing things. However, the company’s team is not afraid to reveal the difficulties they encounter when creating these videos with advanced bots, as they have often shown these bots stumbling, falling and crashing, and fixes and improvements are constantly being made to each bot, allowing for better movements in each video the company publishes.
Spotted robots debuted in 2016 and are a smaller version of the company’s prototype known as the Big Dog. The smaller dog-like robot was faster and agile than the larger version.
