He had been seen pulling a rickshaw, monitoring walkers in a park in Singapore during confinement, assisting Massachusetts police in inspection efforts, or pulling a whole truck in a group. But the Boston Dynamics company's most popular product, the Spot robot , has now hit the field. Its creators have partnered with a New Zealand company to teach it new skills away from the high-tech factories that conceived the quirky four-legged device.
New Zealand company Rocos has shared a video in which Spot travels comfortably across the field to graze a flock of sheep. The activity is part of a new system that the company wants to develop and that would allow groups of these robots to be automated so that they can operate independently but in a coordinated way in the field, Engadget said.
Rocos is confident that increasingly agile Spot robots will be able to collect or inspect crops and, thanks to their infrared and LiDAR cameras - which accurately measure the distances from the emitter to an object - create maps in real time. From a distance, they believe, users from anywhere in the world will be able to control and guide herds. New Zealand had wool as its main export good during the 19th century, although it lost importance as the 20th century progressed.
In June 2016, Boston Dynamics unveiled its new SpotMini robots, weighing just 25 kilos, lighter than other previous company designs. Although it was initially announced that they would be put up for sale, the company changed that criterion to partner with technology companies to develop specific applications for the device, as now with Rocos. Since last January, programmers from all over the world can access software development kits to take advantage of the possibilities of the small Spot .
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