Posted on 06/10/2019 7:39:09 PM PDT by ETL
Videos of Boston Dynamics' robots have been the stuff of both awe and inspiration, as well as nightmares. Now, it appears the robots will be doing more than just performing parkour or dancing around on YouTube.
They're going up for sale.
According to The Verge, who interviewed Boston Dynamics’ CEO Marc Raibert at Amazon's Re:MARS conference in Las Vegas, Spot, the company's dog-like robot and arguably its cutest machine, will be available for purchase "within months" and certainly before the end of 2019.
“We’re just doing some final tweaks to the design,” Raibert said in the interview. “We’ve been testing them relentlessly.”
In October, Boston Dynamics, which is now owned by Japanese conglomerate Softbank, released a video of Spot walking around construction sites in Tokyo as it began to test it "for commercial usage around the world."
Though interest in the robots is sure to be high, don't expect to see Spot everywhere like the latest iPhone or available on Amazon.
“We’re manufacturing them at a reasonably high rate for an early product,” Raibert said, adding that the company is "aiming for 1,000 a year.”
Currently, there are 50 robots available for beta testing.
Raibert refused to give a price for Spot, only stating that the commercial version would be less expensive than its prototypes "[and] we think they’ll be less expensive than other peoples’ quadrupeds.”
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Makes a better coffee table than dog.
I saw a documentary on the military uses for these type things. They showed a larger one with a gasoline motor that was basically a mechanical mule that could be used to transport ammo and supplies allowing troops to be less heavily encumbered.
Be fun to see a guy kick it like that, and then after it recovers it turns around to face him, tases him into oblivion, then keeps on walking.
But can it core a apple?
I would so sic that thing on my former neighbors nasty-ass yappy mutt!
I’ve seen some short videos with that one, is that in a movie?
Good Dog!
Arm them with pepper spray/dye and tasers, to hit anyone on the fence. Network them all together, so the command post can send out the big dogs, when the little ones alert on something.
I’ll bet it shits data all over the rug.
Doubt if its armor played.
Evidently they didn’t want to give the things the means to jump because the hindquarters are lacking a thigh...the “back legs” are just repurposed arms.
In the subsequent pictures where the black tubby rhinolike one tries to go uphill it has a bit of trouble because it only has rear arms and no thighs and can’t use haunches like a horse could.
I wonder why they used such strange ways of articulation when natural models abound. I would think that great shoulder they have wouldn’t be that much easier to design than a true leg that could bunch up and spring to make going uphill much easier.
Oddly enough the green one has horselikee hindquarters... They need to steal those and stick them on the tubby black rhino.
Looks like a four legged tick
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