Boston Dynamics adorable yet terrifying robot dog, Spot, has displayed some pretty amazing capabilities over the years. It’s latest nifty feature is the ability to self-charge. That’s right, the robots are becoming self-sufficient.
Ignoring these warning signs, Boston Dynamics’ latest Spot robot is pretty cool. Known as the Spot Enterprise, the small four-legged robot is designed to carry out remote inspection tasks. The operator can be working in another room or across the globe and the Spot robot can automatically carry out its tasks and investigate issues.
A key difference with the new Spot Enterprise is its ability to self-charge. Its sold with a charging dock that the robot will automatically return to when running low.
According to Boston Dynamics, this allows Spot Enterprise to “perform longer inspection tasks and data collection missions with little to no human interaction.”
The average Spot robot has about 90 minutes of battery life when in operation, along with 4 hours in standby mode. But this new self-charging feature will allow the Spot Enterprise to lie in wait, fully charged, forever.
In addition to self-charging, the Spot Enterprise has a range of updated hardware that includes extended WiFi support, flexibly payload ports and the ability to quickly offload large data sets from missions. This is all to aid the Spot Enterprise in completing long, remote deployments.
Along with the Spot Enterprise, Boston Dynamics also announced the arrival of the Spot Arm. The arm attachment allows Spot to upgrade from simply observing its environment, to interacting with it. It will be able to lift, drag and move objects, bringing it infinitely closely to having household uses.
Boston Dynamics’ Spot robots aren’t available to the public at the moment. Companies can acquire one if the robot will be used for approved “commercial or industrial” purposes. They also cost a casual $108,000.
Not long to go now until we enter the Metalhead reality.