In classic Boston Dynamics style, the company's latest announcement that its SpotMini is off the production line and ready to hit the commercial market has been accompanied by a video showing 10 of these robot dogs effectively pulling a truck across a parking lot.
For several years Boston Dynamics has been developing a series of increasingly sophisticated robots. While its humanoid bot Atlas has been shown backflipping and running around the woods, another more nimble wheeled model called Handle, has been jumping up stairs and moving boxes.
Despite these incredible innovations, Boston Dynamics has still essentially remained a research and development company with no real commercial arm. For the last couple of years the company has been working to fill that commercial hole with SpotMini, a robot dog that looks to be expressly designed for larger scale production.
This latest video reveal is, as usual from Boston Dynamics, very light on details, however it delivers the clearest indication yet that we will be seeing these robots out in the wild in the near future. The video announces the robots to be "off the production line" and "available for a range of applications soon". Pricing is still yet to be revealed.
Showing the power and potential of the SpotMini robots, the video demonstrates 10 of these bots pulling a truck across a parking lot. As well as being the first time we have seen so many of these robots together in action, the video highlights their impressive pulling power. Resembling a team of sled dogs, this video certainly alludes to the fascinating potential in the SpotMini bots, but it is still unclear what commercial applications these robots would be best used for.
Take a look at the video below.
Source: Boston Dynamics
With a nod to MichaelGray and Nik, despots from the dawn of history to present day have managed quite well with the organic computer between their ears, and not all sheep are quadrupedal.