Test reliability robot SpotMini: an attempt to escape from a person

A week ago, the company Boston Dynamics posted a video of how the new models of SpotMini robots help each other open the door and get out of the room. The first robot approaches the door. Realizing his inability to open it, he calls for help from another robot with a manipulator arm. He approaches, opens the door and releases the first robot.

Now the engineers have begun a new round of testing: reliability testing. In a new video, a man with a hockey stick does everything so that the robot does not run away.


The note says that the robot works offline almost all the time, except for aiming at the target. At the very beginning, the operator (who is not shown in the video) takes the robot to the door and directs the manipulator to the handle and gives the command to “run away”. He does the same thing in the 42nd second video. The rest of SpotMini acts completely independently.

YouTube comments are full of resentment. Most viewers are sympathetic to the mechanism. Someone calls it "robotic". Someone demands to punish the “leather bastard”, which “doggy” by the tail. Others simply ask not to mock the robot.

In fact, this is just a SpotMini reliability test and resistance to obstacles. Strange, because no one sympathizes with cars that crash in crash tests. Is this car causing you sympathy?



Does anyone really want to punish the “leather bastards” who drove the 2015 Volkswagen GTI to a breakneck speed and cut it against the wall? It is clear that the tests are carried out to verify the reliability of the machine, in order to assess the consequences of a real accident and improve the safety systems in the next model. Such tests help to gather useful information. Nevertheless, everyone is very happy when, at the end of the Boston Dynamics video, the robot still breaks free.

Interestingly, in almost completely autonomous mode, the robot still behaves quite logically and “reasonably”. For example, when he pulls the handle, and the person holds the door and does not allow it to open, the robot pulls more - and then puts his foot up so that the door does not close. This is a fully autonomous programmed behavior. When a person grabs a robot at a cable in the back of the case and roughly pulls it back - he rests and twists the side to get rid of the grip. Again, this is an automatic reaction, wired into a control program. This is how serial models will behave if SpotMini goes into mass production.

The company Boston Dynamics traditionally behaves very secretively. She does not publish almost any information about her robots and control software. Only periodically uploads the video. So a short official comment on this video is a rare case when we can at least learn something about the work of the mechanism. In this case, we learned that it works almost completely automatically. Independent experts agree. Noah Ready-Campbell, executive director of Built Robotics, another Robotics company, says that even by the behavior of the robot, it can be concluded that it works automatically, because it is unlikely that it would be able to behave this way under the control of the operator.

But still it remains a mystery what SpotMini can do in reality, except for opening doors and resistance to “leather bastards”. Maybe his demo program is limited to this single function.

But even if SpotMini can do little, it still evokes sympathy, unlike a “cruel” person. Not surprisingly, this time Boston Dynamics provided the video with a note: “This test did not annoy or harm the robot.” Poor SpotMini remained safe and sound, although at the 29th second of the video something fell off of him.

It is unlikely that such a “big brother” BigDog, which is planned to use as pack transport in the US Army, or WildCat with a running speed of 35 km / h, can count on such sympathy. If you see such a car running along the forest path to you, there will be no time for joking.

In general, it is not the first time that Boston Dynamics "mocks" its robots. Exactly a year ago, an unknown person kicked the pipe of a two-legged Atlas robot , which caused him to fall face down on the floor.