Look around you! Boston Dynamics is stepping out of the lab to give us a 'Black Mirror'-like world, with robotic dogs on law enforcement patrol. Videographer Daniel Valls was wandering down the street when he suddenly heard a commotion, and his professional instincts led him to grab his camera and record the absurd scene: if you were there, you can hear a voice saying, "That thing is scary!" , and then the robot brushes past the camera. It's a police-deployed robot dog called 'Digidog', and the police department's Technical Rescue Response Team's Frank K. According to Dijako, "This dog will save lives, protect people, protect police officers, that's our goal."
More powerful than a police dogA spokesman for the New York Police Department said in response that the robot was in the testing phase, presumably to see if it would actually be useful in a remote state. It looks like Boston Dynamics' robot is getting ready to leave the lab.
New officer Digidog has been with the department for quite some time. The 70-pound robot, which is in the testing phase, is equipped with lights and cameras that allow police officers to see their surroundings 'in real time,' plus it comes with two-way communication.
The 70-pound 'Digidog' can can also climb stairs. In fact, this isn't the first time the NYPD has deployed Boston Dynamics' robotic dog.
The Massachusetts State Police was the first law enforcement agency in the U.S. to use Boston Dynamics' Spot robot dog. According to documents obtained by the ACLU, the Massachusetts State Police Bomb Squad leased the Spot robotic dogs from Boston Dynamics for a three-month period that began in August and ran through November. The contract between the Massachusetts State Police and Boston Dynamics was revealed. The documents don't reveal the exact details of the robotic dog's use, but a spokeswoman for the state police said that, like robots in other divisions of the bureau, Spot is being used as a "mobile remote detection device," providing officers with images of suspicious devices or potentially dangerous locations, such as where suspects carrying weapons might be hiding.The Spot robotic dog is opening doors in Massachusetts State Police training. This brief video shows how robots can be used to help get humans out of harm's way in a terrorist or hostage situation. The department used another Spot to locate a gunman who then barricaded himself in a building after losing his mind and shooting someone in the head during a parking dispute in Brooklyn.
But Boston Dynamics' omnipotence also makes it a concern. Spot, a robotic dog strapped with a .68 caliber paintball gun, is housed in an art installation at a virtual art gallery in the US. It's a project called 'Spot Rampage' that allows people to 'remotely control the Spot robot' via a website.
Every two minutes, control is transferred to a new user chosen at random. The sport of paintball, which is popular in Europe and the United States, fires paintballs with an average muzzle kinetic energy of 93 joules, which exceeds the prescribed standard for kinetic energy that causes injury to humans (78 joules). The website lists the Spot's parameters in detail, including the $74,500 price tag. In response, Boston Dynamics expressed deep concern that the robotic dog could not be used in any way that might harm humans.
Despite the fact that Boston Dynamics' original research was funded by the military, it has been eager to distance itself from the image as it began offering its sophisticated robotic products for sale. In the company's most recent video, Spot is shown performing more benign tasks such as gardening, cleaning and skipping.
There aren't many robotics companies as popular as Boston Dynamics, which causes a stir online every time it shares new footage of its robotic dogs. Whether it's a pack of robotic dogs hauling a truck, to a dance that even Musk has exclaimed is marvelous, Boston Dynamics always delivers a one-of-a-kind surprise.
Boston Dynamics was recently acquired by South Korea's Hyundai from SoftBank for $1.1 billion, its third change of ownership in seven years.
Since becoming part of SoftBank, Boston Dynamics has been aggressively pushing to commercialize its products, after focusing on military and research robotics for 25 years. While there are many types of Boston Dynamics robots, none is better known than the Spot robot. This product went on sale last year and has already appeared in a variety of different applications. Recent notable application scenarios include Chernobyl in Ukraine, the New York Police Department and telemedicine.
It's worth noting that SoftBank ran into some difficulties last year, including investment losses like those resulting from its bet on WeWork, which may have contributed to the sale of Boston Dynamics.
By contrast, Hyundai makes very practical industrial robots for factory use, and perhaps Hyundai's vision is more in line with what Boston Dynamics is currently undertaking.
Take the recent sci-fi style Ultimate Mobility Vehicle, for example, which combines traditional transportation technology with retrofitted robotics. They say they want to get this business of robotics right, and have announced a $1.4 billion investment over five years to make robotics 20% of the Hyundai group in the future.