Boston Dynamics starts selling Spot robot dog, priced from $74,500

       Robot maker Boston Dynamics has finally put its four-legged robot, Spot, on general sale. After years of development, the company began leasing the machines to businesses last year, and as of today, Boston Dynamics is now letting any U.S. company buy its own Spot robot for $74,500.

　　It's a hefty price tag, about the same as the base price of a luxury Tesla Model S. But for that money, Boston Dynamics says, you're getting the world's most advanced mobile robot, capable of going almost anywhere a human can (as long as there's no ladder involved). While Spot is certainly nimble, its workload is now mostly limited to surveys and data collection. After a trial deployment, Spot created 3D maps of construction sites and hunted for machine failures on offshore oil rigs. Less routine testing has included helping hospitals triage COVID-19 patients and a controversial partnership with a police bomb disposal team.

　　Boston Dynamics promotes Spot as a multi-purpose mobile platform that can be customized with different sensors and programmed to perform patrols and inspections. Boston Dynamics says it sells its robots primarily to industrial and commercial customers, who can customize the installation of sensors to allow the robots to go where they don't want people to go.

　　Spot can be fitted with a range of custom payloads, including sensors and scanners. The company says it will continue to upgrade Spot while it gets customer feedback, but the robot is finally available for general sale. This is due in part to recent software updates that Boston Dynamics engineers have been running at home with their own Spot devices. The Spot 2.0 software update enables more advanced autonomy and navigation capabilities. One feature Boston Dynamics is currently working on is teleoperation. A demo version of the feature will be available to potential Spot customers. After customers remotely log in to the web app on Boston Dynamics' website, they can set the camera view, choosing between external cameras, Spot's own cameras, and the machine's own generated 3D map of its surroundings, and then move the robot with the WASD keys.

　　Boston Dynamics says it will release a similar teleoperation program to customers this year, and another update coming in 2020 is a head-mounted robotic arm, which will open up a host of new applications. Spot will then be able to manipulate its surroundings as well as collect data, using its arm to open doors, turn valves, and flip switches, among other things.