There was a robot walking along the road like a big dog, knees bent, hips wagging, across the parking lot and into a puddle of rain water. There it danced a jig and splashed water on the tarmac. Then it turned and trotted toward a brick house, crawled across the curb and came to a stop inches from the French Windows. It paused for a few seconds as if looking at its own reflection in a mirror.
The scene was so mesmerizing that people forgot it was just a robot, guided from the other end of the parking lot by a woman with a joystick in her hand and a laptop strapped to her waist.
The Robot, called SpotMini, was designed by Boston Dynamics, the New York Times reported. The company plans to start selling the robot, its first commercial robot, next year.
While most tech companies are focused on autonomous driving and navigation devices, Boston Dynamics, a unit of Japan’s SoftBank Corp, is working on robots that can walk freely.
“These robots can climb stairs,” says Sangbae Kim, a professor of mechanical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who is working on similar robots. “They can jump on tables.”
While these robots are very realistic, there are limits to what they can do. They can handle tasks on their own, such as finding a curb and climbing. But they still need human guidance as they walk through unfamiliar places.
In 2013, Google acquired Boston Dynamics, which was making a big push into driverless cars and other robotics technologies. But just four years later, Google, known for its “moonshot” long-term technology projects, sold Boston Dynamics to SoftBank.
Mr Raibert declined to say how much Google or SoftBank had paid for the company. Both owners, he says, have provided ample funding for his research.
Atlas, a 165-pound humanoid robot released earlier by Boston Dynamics, can run, jump and even do somersaults. The Atlas is controlled by a joystick, laptop and radio. But even though Atlas can do very human-like movements, it’s so big and unwieldy that people think it’s bad.
SpotMini is smaller, cheaper and has better balance than Atlas. It can carry (small) objects on its back, and it can open doors on its own (provided the door has a proper handle).
Boston Dynamics does seem to have a boss willing to wait for clarity on the business of the robot. SoftBank has teamed up with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to set up a $100bn investment fund betting on technologies that will take years to realise. The Boston Dynamics deal follows SoftBank’s acquisition of Aldebaran, a French robotics company. Robots are the focus of technology researchers in Japan. SoftBank Has introduced a machine called Pepper that automates some customer service in retail stores. SoftBank reportedly bought Google’s Schaft, which works on a similar project to Boston Dynamics.
Raibert wants Boston Dynamics to sell robots to corporations, governments and other customers of all kinds. Robotics research has been his life’s work, and his goal is to build robots that can do everything animals and humans can do. If that means making money from his experiments, so be it, he thought.
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