Boston Dynamics never fails to surprise us. Even though Alphabet/Google is interested in getting rid of the company, its creations keep improving with each new generation. Yesterday, Boston Dynamics introduced the newest member of the family, SpotMini, a kind of fully electric robot dog that weighs just 25 kilograms and runs for a respectable 90 minutes on its built-in batteries.
Do you remember the Atlas presentation? It was last February, and its original video has accumulated over 16 million views on YouTube. The response from users was mixed: amazement, unease, and even concern over the hits the robot took. But a month later, Bloomberg reported that Alphabet (read Google) wanted to get rid of Boston Dynamics. In short, Alphabet realized that investments in robotics are very long term, and it already has too many moonshots in its halls, which led to cancelling the Replicant division entirely. Add to that the definitive rejection of AlphaDog (LS3) by the US Army (too big and too noisy), and Boston Dynamics' position seems quite delicate... but that doesn't stop it from continuing to work.
What you just saw is SpotMini, a more compact and optimized version of Spot, the electric version that was supposedly going to replace LS3. It's... a robotic dog that can have an arm installed, whose end acts as a hand-head, making it look more like a giraffe. Yes, that description doesn't make sense, but it's what the video shows us. 25 kilograms of weight (29 and a half with the arm), 90 minutes of autonomy, very quiet thanks to its electric design (i.e., no hydraulics or internal combustion engines), and much more agile than we imagined. Although it found a mortal enemy in a banana peel (!), SpotMini's recovery capability is on par with that of its older siblings.
What's next for Boston Dynamics now? They clearly recognized the need to make their robots quieter, but the feeling is they've done it again: SpotMini is as adorable as it is terrifying.
