Spot Robot Dog Expands with Arm Attachment, Teams up With Drone, and more!

Image courtesy of Percepto

Spot, the popular yellow robotic dog/grasshopper from Boston Dynamics, was officially released for sale to anyone earlier this year and it continues to make new friends – and grow new limbs apparently.

Sticking with the theme of dogs being man’s best friend, spot has been busy making new friends with a drone and teaming up with construction technology powerhouse, Trimble. In 2021, you will have an option to buy an arm that will attach to the top of the robot right in the middle of its two front legs.

It’s been very interesting following the development of Spot as a platform.  As I talked about on my recent appearance on the Construction Brothers Podcast, I can’t think of any piece of hardware that has captured the minds of other companies that want to integrate with it.

Spot + Drones

Just when you thought one robot was enough, now they’re teaming up with each other. Percepto, an Israeli-based drone maker, recently scored a $45 million investment and is putting that money to good use in their R&D department. Percepto’s Autonomous Inspection & Monitoring (AIM) collects and analyzes data from around the jobsite by itself. By teaming up with Spot, the drone takes care of the aerial data collection, while Spot takes care of the ground-based collection. Spot will also carry Percepto’s payloads for their imaging and thermal vision hardware.

"Combining Percepto's Sparrow drone with Spot creates a unique solution for remote inspection," said Michael Perry, VP of Business Development at Boston Dynamics, in a press release. "This partnership demonstrates the value of harnessing robotic collaborations and the insurmountable benefits to worker safety and cost savings that robotics can bring to industries that involve hazardous or remote work."

You can see more about the Percepto and Spot partnership in the video below:

Spot + Trimble

In the same vein as the partnership with Percepto above, Trimble and Spot will combine their forces to use the robot’s autonomous functions to automatically collect data for site scans, surveying, and progress monitoring. Trimble plans to sell their integrated Spot robot with integrated scanning, total station, and GNSS technologies already installed.

"We believe the combination of Trimble's experience and industry leadership in construction technologies and Boston Dynamics' Spot can transform the way the industry operates," said Michael Perry, vice president of business development at Boston Dynamics, in a press release. "The integrated solution will enable any jobsite leader to deploy Spot and Trimble technologies to get an accurate view of construction progress through real-time data collection. With a more comprehensive view of site activity, project managers can take proactive measures to ensure on-time, on-budget and safer project delivery."

The company plans to make the Spot/Trimble robot available in the second quarter of 2021 and will have distribution partners in the US, Canada, UK, EU, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan.

You can check out the Trimble/Spot partnership in the video below:

Spot + Robot Arm + Charging Station

Since the beginning, Boston Dynamics has touted Spot’s ability to actually open doors and, next year, that will be possible when they release the robotic arm attachment. According to TechCrunch, there isn’t a hard date on when the arm will actually become available, other than “early next year.” The arm will also be able to pick up and manipulate other objects, besides door handles.

In addition, TechCrunch also reported that the charging dock, which will allow Spot to dock and charge itself will also be available sometime next year, price to be determined.

You can see the arm and charging dock in last year’s launch video for Spot below:

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source https://www.constructionjunkie.com/blog/2020/12/15/spot-robot-dog-expands-with-arm-attachment-teams-up-with-drone-and-more