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One of the companies that received the most attention during the past Mobile World Congress, which closed its doors on Thursday, was IBM. And all thanks to Spotthe robotic dog Boston Dynamics who became famous for videos of his quadrupedal devices receiving harsh punishment, even being hit, without losing his balance. ABC used the fair to speak with Mike Pollitt, head of sales for Boston Dynamics and Rob High, vice president of IBM Networking and Edge Computing Software, about the close relationship that emerged between the two just a year ago and their plans for this device.
Thanks to an agreement between the technology companies, Boston Dynamics has begun to bring robotics to the table, and IBM computational analysis.
With this, it has been possible to create a ‘backpack’ that Spot installs on his back and that can be customized according to the needs of each client with different combinations of sensors. The objective, in any case, is that the robot, with a price of 74,000 dollars, can help human teams to carry out supervision tasks in industrial environments.
According to both spokespersons, it is only the beginning of a long business relationship that will expand to other sectors and other use cases. Boston Dynamics has been designing robots for 30 years, and this is, together with IBM, its first commercial model.
Asset monitoring with Spot is how IBM and Boston Dynamics intend it digitally transform infrastructures over 20 years old. The function of this improved Spot, as we explained, is basically to continuously go through and check the status of, for example, a refinery. There you could check pipe tolerances, thermal values, look for cracks, analyze vibration or act as a security guard.
More uses in the future
The goal of both companies is for this pilot, made up of eight hundred Spots, to grow and cover other use cases. For example, that of the job security: You could determine if a mine is safe to work in, or inspect a construction site without endangering employees.
When companies talk about Spot, they always allude to its virtue of ‘cobot‘, or what is the same, to function as a robot that works with humans, or that helps them in their work, so it does not replace employees. It just does things that can be more difficult for them in places where there is danger.
Although Spot can use automatic surveillance programs, or trace routes when the original is obstructed, you always need an operator to program tasks or change the battery.This gives you six kilometers, or an hour and a half of autonomy, to protect data. All information is processed without connection to the cloud, in ‘edge’ mode, or only using private 5G networks.
In short, the benefits of this robot for companies, according to its spokespersons, “are clear”: it can supervise infrastructure and machinery autonomously, improve the efficiency of facilities, lower operating costs and respond to problems and detect changes in the work environment 24 hours a day.
One of the concerns that many had when seeing what the Boston Dynamics robots could do was that they would become an armed mobile platform. In fact, the internet is full of images of the company’s robots with weapons, but Pollit says that the principles of Boston Dynamics prevent the robots they build from being weaponized. They also avoid facial recognition to ensure the privacy of people around them, so we’ll never see Boston Dynamics robot soldiers or security guards identifying people. Or, at least, that is what they promise from the company.