How SpotMini and Atlas Became the Internet's Favorite Robots

[Narrator] Maybe you've seen Atlas,

the humanoid robot that can run,

do back flips,

and parkour.

Or SpotMini,

the Internet's favorite robotic dog,

which opens doors for its friends.

Yes, every time Boston Dynamics drops a video,

the internet has itself a freakout.

Its latest release?

SpotMini doing the running man to Uptown Funk.

[Uptown Funk by Bruno Mars]

And the reaction online is well deserved.

These are some of the most impressive robots on earth.

But can they make the transition

from Internet stardom to real-world?

People seem to love looking at it.

I don't know exactly what the fascination is.

They don't seem afraid of it,

they mostly are drawn to it.

[Narrator] But the truth is,

these demonstrations don't show typical behavior,

but rather the very best performance the robots can muster.

It took over 20 tried to get Atlas to do this trick.

Once it got the hang of things though,

it could pull it off 90% of the time.

And we honestly don't know

the full extent of SpotMini's abilities.

'Cause Boston Dynamics is a very secretive company.

At the very least,

we know that in some of SpotMini's demos,

the robot is remote-controlled.

But we also know SpotMini can map environments

and then navigate them autonomously,

which is a major step forward for robots like this.

The core of SpotMini is its mobility.

It can go in a large variety of terrains,

it kind of takes care of all the things

it has to worry about to keep itself balanced so that,

if there's a person involved

they can just give it high level guidance.

If there's AI involved it can give it high level guidance.

And the robot takes care of everything else.

So it's a mixture of the mechanical design,

which has some clever things done,

and the software that let it do that.

[Narrator] SpotMini's design has its roots

in a rougher looking robot called Big Dog.

And we learned a ton about the role of dynamic control

and balance in building that.

But it was totally a prototype.

It had a noisy engine

that required lots of continuous maintenance.

We were flying by the seat of our pants.

But once that started to mature,

we did a couple of other projects.

We did a big,

walking robot that could carry 400 pounds,

and then we did a fast one called the Cheetah,

and we started to see that if you did

the right kind of design,

you could really have a much more functional,

almost product-level quadruped.

[Narrator] All of that led to the original,

larger version of Spot.

[Marc] So, Spot had great performance,

the best of any robot we'd ever built,

and sort of paved the way for then doing a smaller version,

which is the SpotMini.

[Narrator] And oh how far SpotMini has come.

Sensors allow it to automatically keep its balance,

even if a human assaults it.

And if you pilot it towards an obstacle

it'll redirect on its own.

And it has an attachable arm

that can move much like a human's.

And no, that's not its head,

that's its hand.

It can rotate,

move up and down,

and bend at the elbow.

It comes equipped with a camera,

which might make it good for

things like inspecting construction sites

when it hits the market next year.

Which leads us back to the million dollar question.

What is SpotMini actually good for?

For starters,

you won't be seeing them in people's homes any time soon.

Yeah, we focusing on business-to-business right now,

not on consumers.

[Narrator] The world just hasn't seen a machine like this,

so Boston Dynamics is relying,

to a large degree,

on customers to tell it what works.

Well, we've designed Spot to be a customizable platform.

So it's a platform like an Android

or even an iOS phone is a platform.

The basic idea is that we're

gonna provide a set of functionality,

and then other people,

including our own applications groups,

will provide both hardware and software

that works on that platform

to customize it for specific applications.

You know, we don't know what the big successes will be yet,

but we're looking at construction,

commercial security,

some municipal security,

entertainment.

[Narrator] Which might get you thinking that a robot

like SpotMini will steal your job.

But at least in the near-term,

the machines are more likely to supplement human labor,

not replace it.

Any yes, SpotMini will continue to wow us all online,

but it's the market that will determine its future.

So, if you've been looking for a dance instructor

that never gets tired,

now's the time to speak up.

[funky music]