As a quadruped robot, Spot can operate virtually anywhere a person can—going up and down stairs, indoors or outdoors, and through cramped or confined spaces. While this mobility can be impressive on its own, its real value is in automating sensing and inspection in areas inaccessible with wheeled or tracked robots and drones. You can send Spot into areas designed for people, that are unstructured, or even hazardous, to collect the data you need to understand what's going on in your facility or at your jobsite.

Artificial intelligence is changing the way businesses operate. AI systems demand a continuous flow of repeatable data that’s difficult to collect on physical sites. Today, the health of equipment in facilities is monitored through a mix of fixed sensors and operator rounds. These sensors are limited in perspective, expensive to scale, and can’t adapt to changes. Companies make up the data deficit by spending human resources on tedious data collection. But people are too inconsistent at data collection and too valuable to be feeding an AI system all day. Instead, they should be at the top of the value chain turning data-driven insights into action.

What does it take for a robot to run, flip, vault, and leap like an athlete? Creating these high-energy demonstrations is a fun challenge, but our technical goals go beyond just creating a flashy performance. On the Atlas project, we use parkour as an experimental theme to study problems related to rapid behavior creation, dynamic locomotion, and connections between perception and control that allow the robot to adapt – quite literally – on the fly. 

For the first time today, both Atlas robots have completed the complex obstacle course flawlessly. Or, almost flawlessly.

The first of the two robots ran up a series of banked plywood panels, broad jumped a gap, and ran up and down stairs in the course set up on the second floor of the Boston Dynamics headquarters. The second robot leapt onto a balance beam and followed the same steps in reverse, and then the first robot vaulted over the beam. Both landed two perfectly synchronized backflips, and the video team has captured every move. 

To celebrate Boston Dynamics joining the Hyundai Motor Group family, Spot joined BTS for a dance off. We documented how that dance developed from an idea to reality—the goals, the inspirations, and the challenges of choreographing robots. Kathleen Brandes, a software engineer on the Spot team, notes, “Every time we make a new video, the ability of the robot is improved. It looks fluid and artistic on film, but we need to make it work on hardware first.” 

At first, it’s not quite clear what you’re looking at. The yellow robots, sitting in silence, are lined up so closely that they almost resemble deck chairs stacked on top of one another. Then, in time with the music, their arms shoot out into a fluid series of patterns, giving the appearance of a single, many-armed robot peacocking for the camera. Finally, the seven Spots separate, synchronizing their steps and appearing to play off of one another’s dance moves. 

Agile mobile robots have been helping industry leaders operate more intelligently, efficiently and safely. More capable than ever before, these robots can go anywhere that people can on your sites, carrying sensors and computers to collect and process data at the edge.