Launch Event: Meet Spot's Expanded Product Line

[Music] [Music] hello and welcome to the boston dynamics headquarters today i'm excited to announce the expansion of our spot product line to include new capabilities and offerings that extend the already significant capabilities of spot when we launched spot a little over a year ago our vision was to bring to market the only robot in the world that can go where you go offering a way to automate data capture and get eyes on work sites that have complex terrain the reception of spot by our customers has been tremendous we've sold over 400 robots and nearly as many payloads our customers are using spot in a huge variety of applications from construction sites where conditions change on a daily basis to deep underground mines that feature rough and rocky terrain inside nuclear power plants keeping workers safe from radiation and offshore rigs in the most treacherous seas in the world along the way we've been growing a community of developers and partners who contribute their own expertise and products to deliver valuable solutions to their customers so far over 40 partners have joined with us to build out spots capabilities recent additions include flear and the c360 gas sensor which gives spot a sense of smell trimble and they're industry-leading solutions for the construction industry rna and razon who bring expertise in low latency remote communications since the first shipment of spot we've been listening to you our customers to learn what you need in order to make spot part of your mission critical operations you said you wanted to be able to leave spot at a large complex work site and have the robot autonomously and indefinitely patrol that site doing rounds and readings you said you wanted to be able to operate spot remotely to avoid having to send people into hazardous or remote areas and you said you wanted spot not only to capture data to inform people of work to be done but to perform manual work itself today we're making all this possible today we're launching three new spot products an enterprise version of spot that allows you to fully automate inspections of any length and frequency on work sites of any size a web-based software add-on called scout that allows you to operate spot anytime anywhere and the spot arm which makes remote manipulation easy and accessible whether it's opening a door or cabinet fetching a sample or throwing a switch our goal is to make spot your go-to platform for mobile data collection and manipulation as usual our engineers have done their homework to make these new capabilities easy to use by your entire workforce to give you details next is michael perry our vice president of business development for industries with hazardous work digital transformation offers the opportunity to catch problems faster reducing risk to people as well as improving operations and maintenance but accessing expansive amounts of data in real time continues to challenge even the most sophisticated industrial organizations this is why leaders like bp national grid and merck are turning to spot in spot they see the opportunity to capture more frequent reliable and comprehensive data sets to realize operational efficiencies and even more critically mitigate risk spot uniquely solves data collection problems by providing mobility and automation in spaces where traditional robots have struggled it also has the flexibility to be adapted for a wide variety of tasks whether that means configuring spot to carry a seismic sensor into a deep underground line or enabling the robot to track construction progress this is the spot you know today but as rob said our work with customers over the past year has shown us that there's an opportunity for spot to do more take woodside australia's largest provider of natural gas gas processing plants are complex potentially hazardous sites with an array of equipment that needs to be continuously monitored and as an early adopter woodside has proven that spot's mobility provides a practical solution for site monitoring activities reducing the need for putting people at risk or having to censor every inch of these large complicated facilities woodside believes that spot has the potential to handle a diverse range of additional inspection tasks across its sites nevertheless many of these sites are so remote that it can take hours just to get there reaching spot's full potential meant it had to be capable of being used from hundreds of miles away meet spot enterprise spot enterprise is a reimagining of our base spot robot created for customers just like woodside this robot will enable continuous fully autonomous data collection on work sites of any size to help you automate hazardous and remote and site inspection tasks operators can utilize multiple docs to create long range missions on remote sites with built-in dock detection spot will recognize its dock and return home as a part of an autonomous mission or manually at the push of a button simply drive spot within range of the dock fiducial and press dock in the tablet interface or add as an action in an auto walk mission to have spots self-charge autonomously when docked spot charges back to full battery capacity in two hours self-charging is only one of the new features of the spot enterprise robot in addition to the basic mobility capabilities that spot is known for spot enterprise leverages upgraded hardware for improved safety communications and behavior in remote environments these upgrades expand the range that auto walk missions can cover offers greater wi-fi support adds flexibility to our payload ports and provides an ethernet connection in the self-charging dock to quickly offload large data sets collected during the robot's mission spot enterprise will enable customers like woodside to automate data capture in remote facilities safely and efficiently but to live up to the full potential of reducing people's time in remote and dangerous environments spot also needs software that enables someone to manage the robot from miles away up until now most of our customers have chosen to operate spot through the tablet that ships with the robot this is meant that they have to physically be present with the robot or implement complicated infrastructure to drive the robot over long distances today we're introducing a new way to conduct and play back autonomous missions anytime anywhere you have access to a browser and an internet connection we call this web-based teleoperation software scout chris bensel our scout engineering lead is here to tell you more about it with scout your team should never have to set foot on a remote or dangerous site to simply get eyes on a situation scout lets operators control their fleet of spots from a virtual control room tele operates spot and review data in real time or follow along on the robot's missions all from your browser spot autonomously docks undocks and collects the data you need to perform routine site documentation asset management and more robust inspection is central to scout simple controls let you hone in on an object of interest such as to check a gauge or read a meter simply drag a rectangle on the screen and the spot cam will aim and zoom on that area with spot cam's 30x optical zoom you'll be able to inspect even the hardest to reach objects you can view thermal imagery by quickly toggling on spot cam's ir mode and you can also listen for any anomalies in the environment using spotcam's microphone scout can be used to take spot anywhere you would go on your site navigate graded floors tight corridors obstacles and stairs all with ease you can use a keyboard or a third-party joystick controller to give spot instantaneous commands like move left right forwards or backwards with touch2go you can also click on a location in the environment and spot will automatically navigate there this is great for precise navigation over high latency network connections in addition to teleoperation scout lets you kick off pre-recorded auto walk missions to support repeatable inspection routes with no on-site supervision you can observe spot's autonomous execution of the mission while working on other projects if an anomaly occurs you can intervene take over manual control to get a more detailed look if needed and take steps to resolve any issues before problems become critical scout allows spot to be your eyes and ears on the ground to test scout and other spot capabilities the spot development team operates a 24x7 unstaffed lab which we access over vpn this lab has helped us build and test a number of features focused on robust remote operation in developing scout we made sure that it maintained the same features a user would find while driving spot with a tablet for one spot has built-in obstacle avoidance even if the operator attempts to drive spot directly into an obstacle such as a metal pole spot will automatically detect the obstacle and walk around it obstacle avoidance can be adjusted and decreased for a situation needing tighter clearance or increased to create a safer larger cushion spot also handles stairs well by turning on stairs mode spot will automatically detect stairs including open riser graded metal stairs and walk smoothly up and down them operators using scout can get more situational awareness before descending stairs by looking backwards or by enabling terrain mode which shows a real-time feed of the 3d geometry around spot spot has a number of advanced mobility settings which can help with navigating through difficult areas operators can choose to adjust spot speed and have the robot walk slowly when going through tight quarters they can also adjust the robot's height to get past overhangs such as crossbars operators can have spot walk in a lower stance to get them through without colliding docking is a one-click operation operators just need to get spot close to a dock once there simply click the dock button and spot takes care of the rest spot navigates to an approach point backs up and slowly descends to start charging although spot is a remarkably stable robot occasionally disturbances can happen and the robot can fall over but there's no need to send someone out in the field in this case click self right and spot will automatically get itself back in an upright and seated position then you can resume normal operations spock can also recover if it ends up in a communications dead zone for example if spot walks out of range of a wi-fi access point with auto return when spot detects that it has lost a communications link it will retrace its steps until it starts receiving commands again collaboration is built into scout scout supports multiple spots and multiple users on a single server although each spot can have only one operator at a time there can be multiple viewers watching what that spot is doing for example if an operator comes across a leak or another problem in their facility they can send a link to a supervisor who can quickly assess the situation by opening the view mode in their browser we've also designed scout to be easy to deploy scout runs on an on-site 1u server the software comes pre-installed so all you need to do is rack it power it and provide network connectivity there's a web-based administrative console to configure the server's networking users and robots it can communicate to we know information security is important to you and we're confident the security infrastructure and scout will meet those needs scout can run over a vpn or you can choose to run scout in an isolated network with as tight restrictions as you require the scout system never needs to connect to the internet all access to scout is restricted to authenticated users only and all data is encrypted in transit and at rest just like spot software we plan to continue to enhance and improve scout with regular updates in upcoming months you can expect a regular cadence of new feature deployments for more on how we're enabling you to use scout let's go back to michael as chris mentioned scout makes safe efficient data collections simple but we've learned that moving to a complete solution includes more than a capable robot and easy to use software together with the spot enterprise robot scout software our spot cam plus ir payload and premium support we are proud to offer an out of the box solution for collecting data in remote or dangerous environments this operator ready solution will provide the data you need to proactively maintain and manage your assets maximize uptime and save on operating costs it took us many years of development to get spot capable of walking through complicated rugged terrain that have been difficult for traditional automation and now we made it easy to access data in these remote environments beyond data collection however we are focused on how spot not just senses the world but how it interacts with the world as well today we are officially launching the spot arm which will ship with several autonomous capabilities including the ability to open doors and turn valves but we also believe that the ecosystem of researchers developers and operators using spot today can enable the arm to do even more that's why we are also shipping an api that makes it easy to develop new applications for the spot arm to talk with us more about the spot arm what it will ship with and how it will enable our customers here is al rizzi our chief scientist thanks michael we've been experimenting with mobile manipulation since our early days working on robots like big dog everyone has seen stationary robot arms of many sizes and speeds designed to do all sorts of tasks but we've yet to see really capable and successful mobile robotic arms this video which dates to 2013 shows big dog using its entire body in concert with a high performance arm to throw a cinder block roughly five meters the coordination you can see between the arm and the body in this video is at the core of our approach to mobile manipulation and represents a core capability we are striving to make available on spot so throwing cinder blocks is fun but spot could also have some fun with its arm here we see three spot robots playing together this jump rope behavior you see here serves to demonstrate both the capability of the robot and arm hardware as well as the software suite that controls and coordinates them while jumping rope may not be particularly relevant in an industrial setting we hope you can appreciate the capability that a quirky and fun scene like this demonstrates but as i said at the outset we have much greater aspirations for spot than merely performing stunts like jump roping based on discussions with early users it is clear to us that the main themes that make spot valuable to applications in construction utilities oil and gas and manufacturing are equally relevant when we think about mobile manipulation this makes us very eager to deliver mobile manipulation capabilities that build on our experience in advanced mobility autonomy and control our intent is to make it as easy to perform manipulation tasks with spot in much the same way that spot has already made it easy to locomote through complex environments the arm we developed includes six degrees of freedom in addition to a gripper the overall length of the arm is approximately one meter and when combined with the mobility of the base robot results in a system that can flexibly access all of the environment around the robot the arm weighs only 8 kilos but is capable of picking up and carrying roughly 5 kilos this gives the robot ample strength to interact with typical objects that the robot is likely to encounter in its environment including dragging things like cinder blocks the arm is fast enough to move the end effector at velocities of up to 10 meters per second making things like the jump rope demonstration possible finally we've included both an imaging depth sensor and a 4k rgb camera in its gripper making it possible to see objects that the robot is manipulating and perform inspection tests this initial release of the arm will ship with two primary modes for controlling it you can use the tablet to directly teleoperate the arm to perform one-off inspection or manipulation tasks alternatively you can access all the arm functions through an api much like you can remotely control locomotion this enables development of novel autonomous control strategies or even allows you to build your own custom tele operation interface out of the box both of these interfaces provide access to basic kinematic control of the arm as well as a suite of more complex behaviors which incorporate supervised autonomy this is very similar to how we've tried to make spots mobility a seamless experience for the user where you simply tell the robot where to go and the robot decides how to place its feet and maintain balance in the case of the arm the user tells the robot what to grasp or how to interact with the environment and the robot makes the necessary local decisions in order to complete the task the arm is a tightly integrated add-on for the robot this is important as it allows the entire system to maintain balance and take advantage of the underlying mobility when being used to manipulate the complex environments we expect the robot to be used in and while the arm can only be attached or removed by boston dynamics there's room for additional sensors under and behind the arm so that the platform can still be customized for specific applications even once the arm is mounted this video demonstrates the robot being tele-operated to manipulate a variety of objects we start by using a semi-autonomous grasping behavior to grasp and drag a hose we can also see how the large workspace afforded by the combination of the arm and spot's mobility can be used to nudge a container on the floor finally we can see how the sensors in the gripper can be used to semi-autonomously grasp pick and place a tool in this next video we can see a more complex integrated behavior being used to interact with a switch we foresee this type of constrained manipulation or interaction will be central to many of the use cases for mobile manipulation on spot this same type of interaction can be used to open doors here we see a fully automated door opening behavior we have developed in action allowing the robot to quickly traverse a standard door the door opening behavior merely requires the operator to point the robot at the door handle and tell the robot which side the hinge is on after that spot takes care of all the details of pushing or pulling the door using its foot to hold the door open while it re-grasps the door and completes the task finally you can even use the in-gripper color camera to perform inspections here we can see an operator inspecting a leaky pipe and using those semi-autonomous constrained manipulation behaviors to grasp and close a valve we are looking forward to deploying the arm in its initial set of features with a broad set of users we are sure these new capabilities will enable users to discover what mobile manipulation can add to their business and help us continue to support the variety of use cases people are eager to explore it has been so exciting for us to see spot doing incredible things in the hands of our customers and this day marks a new chapter for spot we've moved from offering spot as a platform for developers to offering an out-of-the-box solution that's operator ready the measure of success is not that we can make the robot work but that you can i hope you like these new spot capabilities i can't wait to see what you will do thank you for joining us today stay well and stay safe you

Channel: Boston Dynamics

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Id: WvTdNwyADZc

Length: 24min 24sec (1464 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 02 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

That’s cool, you just need to be rich to own one first.