Robot Dogs – The Four-Legged Future of Technology?

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We are all familiar with the global race for autonomous deliveries, led mainly by developments of aerial and wheeled vehicles, but other solutions might be just as viable, for example – robot dogs. Imagine a four-legged delivery robot designed to walk packages right to customers’ front doors. 

The battery-powered ANYmal robot — made by Swiss robotics manufacturer ANYbotics — is capable of hopping onto platforms, stepping over obstacles in its path and climbing the front steps of a customer’s porch. The dogbot can even raise a paw to ring the doorbell and gently slide a package onto the doorstep. The robot finds its way with help from its wide-angle cameras, sensor-studded feet and a radar-like technology known as LIDAR, which uses beams of laser light to map the surrounding area.

According to the ANYbotics’s website, ANYmal’s legs provide excellent mobility when moving up and down stairs, climbing over obstacles, steps, and gaps, and crawling into tight spaces. It delivers reliable performance in harsh indoor and outdoor environments and through rain, splash water, wind, snow, and dust. The system autonomously navigates complex multi-story environments. Once guided through the environment, the robot remembers every detail and finds the quickest route to perform its mission. During operation, the robot’s system safely avoids obstacles and reliably moves over rough terrain.

Furthermore, AI-based inspection algorithms analyze the sensory data the robot detects to interpret values, classify results, and identify anomalies.

Now with the development of ANYmal X, the new explosion proof robot, it is evident that the field of robotics and animal-based technologies is only getting stronger and will transform the world.