The Truth About Boston Dynamics' Robot Dog

Robot dogs are here. But why?

You might think you already know Spot, the robot dog from Boston Dynamics. Maybe you saw a viral video of it opening a door, or dragging a truck, or dancing. But now, this robot has hit a HUGE milestone... Spot got a job!

These robots are now out in the real world doing real work, for fire departments, factories, defunct nuclear power plants like Fukushima, ancient ruins like Pompeii, deep mines, and, more controversially, police departments. You might already be starting to see robot dogs walking around, and even if you’re not, they’re starting to affect your life.

That’s why we went to visit Boston Dynamics. In this video, we put Spot to the test, to show you what it’s really capable of, and how our future could be even better with robot dogs.

Chapters:
00:00 What is Boston Dynamics robot dog?
1:33 What does Boston Dynamics robot dog do?
2:50 Why robot dogs?
3:32 Taking Spot on an obstacle course
4:33 When Spot falls down
5:34 How Spot protects itself and others
6:45 What equipment does Spot use?
7:20 How Boston Dynamics robot dog opens doors
8:05 Spot at Fukushima
8:29 Boston Dynamics robot dog working for the police
9:12 Concerns with weaponizing robot dogs
10:10 What should robot dogs be used for?
10:44 Why robot dogs are huge if true
11:43 Duh nah nah Inspector Spot

Additional reading and watching:

Bio:
Cleo Abram is an Emmy-nominated independent video journalist. On her show, Huge If True, Cleo explores complex technology topics with rigor and optimism, helping her audience understand the world around them and see positive futures they can help build. Before going independent, Cleo was a video producer for Vox. She wrote and directed the Coding and Diamonds episodes of Vox’s Netflix show, Explained. She produced videos for Vox’s popular YouTube channel, was the host and senior producer of Vox’s first ever daily show, Answered, and was co-host and producer of Vox’s YouTube Originals show, Glad You Asked.

Gear I use:
Camera: Sony A7SIII
Lens: Sony 16–35 mm F2.8 GM and 35mm prime
Audio: Sennheiser SK AVX
Music: Tom Fox and Musicbed

—
Welcome to the joke down low:

What do you get when you cross a dog with a calculator?
A best friend you can count on!

Use “best friend” in a comment to let me know you’re a real one who made it to the end of the description :)

[stevencrawford]

A robot dog saying "Follow me gentlemen" was peak comedy

[johnnyharris]

I’ve been waiting for this vid for nearly a decade.

[itsfonk]

Cleo-hime arriving color matched with Spot, and instinctively petting it and cheering it on with a higher-pitched pet voice, really elevates her story beyond the simple reporting on other channels (:

[aogasd]

"In Pompeii, Spot is inspecting graver robber tunnels for police" made it sound like the robbers bought a Spot to make sure their tunnels were safe 😂😂😂

[shakesnbake]

11:34 Spot's thinking - "i'll remember this lack of belly rubs in the robot uprising" 🤣

[stevenbastian]

9:55 Saying "we believe in anti-weaponization" for the robots is like Google saying "Don't Be Evil" (its original motto). We always start out with such noble intent.

[DougvonSohsten]

LOVE... YOUR... VIDEOS... The level of respect for the clarity of information and showing the viewers all sides of a subject (while keeping it as optimistic or at leats questioning as possible) is INSANE. All I can say is: Never stop making content and we need more Cleos in this world.

[clockwise]

its her and the dog twining in black and yellow for me 😂 Cleo I love your channel. always refreshingly optimistic and curious.

[fuzzstergoat]

ohhh this is the robot that michael reeves taught to pee beer

[kotonohakatsura]

As a wheelchair User i like to imagine to put a chair on this device in order to move myself around instead of using wheels. :)
Please like in order to push the comment❤.

[serroche]

5:26 I was really expecting him to shake all that dirt 😂

[DromaticGnome]

Cleo color coordinating her outfit with Spot is exactly why I love her so much 🙂

[piteshmistry]

Whenever a new video is out from Cleo, you always know its gonna be a good one! Also the matching colours is hilarious :)

[mattmoore]

We have one of these robot dogs at one of the facilities here at GRC. It's used to check on machinery that is too loud for humans to check on while it's running, even with hearing protection. The robot dog can even go up and down stairs lol

[jotaele.]

I love it when Cleo has such a “childlike curiosity & energy” on whatever topic she’s talking about; she seems like such a fun & nice person to be friends with, and probably also an amazing conversationalist.

Keep doing your thing Cleo!
Much love from PR 🇵🇷

[LetsGetIntoItMedia]

My robot human keeps asking for a pet obot dog, but I just know all the care (changing the oil, ordering replacement parts, making messes for it to clean up) will all fall on me. Maybe when my human robot is a little older...

[ShepardDrake]

The "Fancy Butler" Spot at the end where he talks is totally like something out of Portal 😂

[DavidMulderOne]

The thing to realize is that for *most* inspections tasks it's far cheaper to mount 50 cameras all over the building that will do non-stop monitoring, rather than have 1 super fancy camera walking around, *but* some of my favourite examples where it actually makes sense to use these robots is to handle cases you didn't plan for as a relatively capable 'remote presence' platform. I think this is how a bunch of swiss or austrian hydroelectric plants were planning/thinking of using them. Most of them don't have a constant human presence, and they do have a bunch of monitoring installed although the installations themselves are old and have a lot of old equipment, so when something is wrong a human has to drive there to check it out (with some of them being fairly remote). The idea was that having something like spot in each of those could allow better triaging.

[ummthatguy.]

Oh how I've missed Huge *if true... very happy to have this back on my screen. Happy New Year Cleo! Thanks for producing the show and hope for continued success.

[idlevalley]

I like that you matched your outfit to the robot. It shows how genuinely passionate you are in a subtle way.