#spotrobot

Are Boston Dynamics' Robot Dogs Good for Anything Real?We've seen Spot, the quadruped robot from Boston Dynamics, performing some amazing feats, like dancing, marching in a halftime show, and recreating a Rolling Stones video.Sure they're entertaining, but somewhere along the way you may have wondered if they can do anything useful. That is, something necessary that clients might be willing to pay for.

Spot Robot Dances in a Halftime ShowIn case you have been wondering why college tuition is so high these days, behold the Mizzou halftime show Saturday. The spotlight performer was a Spot robot from Boston Dynamics. Watch him shake his tail to The Jackson 5's song "Dancing Machine."The University of Missouri College of Engineeringacquired their first Spot robot during the spring 2021 semester, and now they gave at least three. The student engineers have been programming their robots to do various things, like pushups and possibly some football moves, but chose to debut Spot's talents to the public with the dance team and marching band. A good time was had by all.But then again, maybe they should have taught those robot dogs more football skills. Mizzou lost that game to Tennessee, 24-62. No one in Missouri is thinking about that, though, since the robot dog stole the show and gave us a viral video.(Image: Mizzou Engineering)#SpotRobot #robot #UniversityofMissouri #dance #cheerleader #FootballGame #Mizzou #BostonDynamics

Spot Robots Autonomously Explore Martian-Like CavernOne day, hopefully we’ll explore underground caves on Mars which may harbor preserved remains or even living microbial life but for now, NASA scientists are preparing by training the dog-like Spot robots in caves here on Earth.NASA’s BRAILLE (Biologic and Resource Analog Investigations in Low Light Environments) collaborated with Boston Dynamics and JPL’s robotic team CoSTAR to explore the Valentine Cave in the Lava Beds National Monument in California.Initial demonstrations with a team of the quadruped Spot robots show the advantages of legged robots in exploring the uneven cavern terrains autonomously, with each robot being able to carry special instruments to detect, collect, and analyze scientifically interesting samples.#SpotRobot #robot #Mars #NASA #JPL #BostonDynamics #cave #lavatube #LavaBedsNationalMonument #ValentineCave

Boston Dynamics Robot Dog Spot Challenged BTS to a Dance-OffBoston Dynamics' robot Spot has got some smooth moves! Watch as the company challenged K-pop sensation BTS to a dance-off with seven Spot robots dancing to the band's 2020 hit song IONIQ: I'm On It.In a behind-the-scenes blog post, Boston Dynamics roboticists explained how they created the dance:Monica Thomas, a professional choreographer and former dancer, took the lead on choreography for “Spot’s On It”, as she did for Boston Dynamics’ previous dance videos. Outlining a dance routine for robots, she notes, presents a whole separate set of challenges from traditional choreography. For one thing, she’s in constant communication with Boston Dynamics engineers to explore which steps the robots are physically able to do. And, of course, Spot has twice as many legs as a human dancer. “When I try to replay the choreography on my own body, my knees bend the wrong way, even if I put myself on all fours,” Thomas says. “I have less knowledge about what things even could look like, and so I have a lot more flexibility about what it does look like.”...Thomas handed off dance steps to Jakob Welner, a robotic movement consultant based in Denmark, who animated them in Autodesk Maya. “You can do anything you want in the software, artistically,” Welner says. “But as soon as you want it to work on a robot, you need to comply with physics, and you need to comply with the mechanics and dynamics of the robot.”#BostonDynamics #robot #SpotRobot #BTS #dance #KPopView the full video clip below: