Familiar Robot Gets Autonomous Upgrade

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As a mobile, durable, and customizable robot, Spot, manufactured by Boston Dynamics, was built to go where other robots cannot. Spot navigates rugged environments to capture data in real-time – feeding this data back into existing business systems, wherever they are located. In the energy sector this provides real-time anomaly detection as well as access to historic digital records for comparison. In agriculture, farmers can access information such as more accurate and up-to-date yield estimates..

Now Spot can be easily managed from a remote location. Rocos, a robot operations software platform, has partnered with Boston Dynamics to provide remote mission design and execution as well as teleoperation functionality, enhancing Spot’s existing capabilities.

Coupled with the Rocos platform, missions can be designed and edited on the fly, and sensor data collected on the mission can be accessed by remote teams. Spot can also be manually teleoperated to investigate issues, capture new data, or be redirected as required, according to businesswire.com.

“By connecting robots to the cloud, we can help them combine a cloud software layer with robotics to achieve physical automation at scale. Our customers are augmenting their human workforces to automate physical processes that are often dull, dirty, or dangerous.” Rocos CEO David Inggs said.

The importance of autonomous robots has been highlighted during the COVID-19 pandemic where many have been used to encourage social distancing, clean public spaces and hospitals, and even deliver vital medication.

Through the use of this joint technology, organizations can plan and schedule missions, remotely operate their robots in the exploration of uncharted territory, capture 3D visualizations and other sensor data in their environment, navigate risky or dangerous terrain, and proactively intervene in required situations. All of this possible in either offline or online modes.