Boston Dynamics robot Spot is about to be launched on the market. What can it bring to our lives?

According to American technology media The Verge, Boston Dynamics' first important robot is about to be launched.

Since June, the company has been planning to release a robot called "Spot" (formerly SpotMini) to the market. Today, Boston Dynamics finally brought more details about the robot's launch. Spot will not be sold directly to the market, but if you are a company with ideas (and not short of money), you will have the opportunity to get one. This means that for most ordinary people, the probability of seeing Spot on the street will be greatly increased.

Spot's capabilities are pretty much what the company showed off in June, but it's still impressive to use it in person. Spot can go wherever it's told to, avoid obstacles, and maintain balance in extreme situations — all necessary skills for navigating unfamiliar environments.

Spot can carry four hardware modules on its back, which will help the company reskill the robot to complete special tasks. If you plan to use Spot to check for natural gas leaks, you can add a methane detector to it. If you want to stay in touch over long distances, you can attach a mesh radio module to it. Boston Dynamics has equipped the robot with LIDAR components (laser radar, an important component of self-driving cars) from Velodyne to create indoor 3D maps. Since Spot is designed to work in the rain, outdoor applications are also under discussion.

There are also Spot's dance moves, which can be programmed into an external computing module. You may think that performing a piece of "Uptown Funk" is just a joke, but entertainment is indeed gradually becoming an important market for Spot. Boston Dynamics has cooperated with Cirque du Soleil's innovation lab to study the possibility of Spot performing on stage.

During the test, people nearby were asked to stand 2 meters away from Spot to avoid being pinched by the robot's joints. When the robot climbed the stairs, it was given a lot of space around it to prevent it from accidentally hitting other people when it lost balance and fell. These measures are more like Boston Dynamics' caution rather than Spot being dangerous. But it also reminds us again that this robot is not designed to interact with people. Currently, Boston Dynamics focuses on the use of robots in closed and controlled environments, so people will not see any Spot robots appearing in local shopping malls for the time being.

Despite the company's military background, Boston Dynamics said they are not interested in weaponizing Spot. Michael Perry, Boston Dynamics' vice president of business development, said: "Fundamentally, we don't want to see Spot do anything that harms humans, even in a simulated environment. This is something we have repeatedly emphasized to consumers."

While Spot is impressive in videos, it’s still a long way from being fully autonomous. A popular demo video last year showed Spot opening a door: carefully turning the handle, pulling the door back, and then blocking it with one leg as it walked through the door. Some robotics researchers were very interested in the demo: Does this mean Spot can identify a door, find the door handle, and open it on its own? When asked to walk through a section of road, can Spot identify which are walls and which are doors that can be opened?

The answer is actually very simple. The video demonstrates Spot's "handle" command. The command is initiated by the controller, and the trigger mechanism is to point the robot's claw at the door and then identify the handle. In fact, the action of opening the door requires skillful use of the physical forces involved to stabilize Spot's body. This process cannot be replicated by human controllers, but all of this is just motor intelligence, not interpretive intelligence. It is not Spot's job to identify doors or respond to cues from the physical world. In fact, Spot's world is very simple, consisting mainly of obstacles, footholds, and preset routes.

This is the exact opposite of what many academic roboticists are focusing on. Henny Admoni, a human-robot interaction expert at Carnegie Mellon University, said: "Boston Dynamics has always been very strong in mechanics and control, but robots operating in human environments cannot avoid interacting with people. Integrating human-robot interaction skills early in development has more potential than reintroducing human-robot interaction into existing systems."

Obviously this is not the path Boston Dynamics is taking. Spot's human-machine interaction capabilities also put a big question mark on the future of the project. For now, the company hopes to continue exploring more possibilities in spaces that do not involve humans.

Even so, Spot's progress is enough to make people, especially Boston Dynamics, excited. If future platforms allow, Spot will provide a new way for computer programs to interact with the physical world, providing a new force that can widely affect technology and society.