Standing 2.75 feet tall and weighing in at a hefty-defty 66 lbs and a bench press record of 30, give it up for Boston Dynamics’s SpotMini. No really, give it up – you’re not going to stop it from accomplishing its goal. Just ask this misguided individual who tried his doggone darndest to keep the four-legged yellow bot from going through a door. Why did he seek to interrupt SpotMini on its quest for entry into the next room? How will PETR (People for Ethical Treatment of Robots) react to this shocking and disturbing turn of events? The answers are: 1. to test its adaptability to physical disturbance, and 2. they won’t, because they don’t exist.
No robots were harmed in the making of this video. SpotMini was guided to the door by an off-screen operator and given the command to open it. That was the only human assistance it received. The task of opening the door was performed autonomously. It takes a while to identify the handle and to get itself through the doorway, but more impressive was its ability to keep its balance and resist being yanked on. It moved almost like a real dog. Without the barking and growling. That’s going to be a plug-in later.
SpotMini was introduced to the world around mid-2016 as one of their smallest and quietest robots, modeled after the larger Spot. In late 2017, it was given a smoother frame and a splash of color. It’s a nice piece of engineering, but it begs (heh heh) the question: why not just get automatic doors? Cheaper and quicker. Obviously SpotMini does more than that, but if it requires a human controller for part of its job, surely that same human (or another) could perform the task quicker. Of course, the new model is still, well, new. Give it a few months to grow up a little and it may well surprise us.
