Boston Dynamics Starts Selling Its Spot Robot -- For $74,500 (venturebeat.com) 55
An anonymous reader writes: Boston Dynamics today opened commercial sales of Spot, its quadruped robot that can climb stairs and traverse rough terrain. Businesses can purchase the Spot Explorer developer kit for $74,500 at shop.bostondynamics.com. Spot Explorer includes the robot, two batteries, the battery charger, the tablet controller, a robot case, a power case, and Python client packages for Spot APIs. Boston Dynamics will also be selling Spot payloads, and customers will get software updates "when available." The company is offering free shipping for a limited time -- the website currently states that Spot Explorer ships in six to eight weeks.
The announcement marks a couple of milestones for the company founded in 1992. It's the first time businesses can purchase a Boston Dynamics robot directly. It's also the company's first online sales offering. Spot is only for sale in the U.S. for commercial and industrial use, but the company hopes to expand internationally this year. "We plan to manufacture around a thousand Spots in the next year but can increase that based on the demand," a Boston Dynamics spokesperson told VentureBeat. "We are exploring opportunities for enabling sales overseas this year." The company was originally planning to finish building 1,000 Spots by mid-2020, but the coronavirus pandemic disrupted that timeline.
The announcement marks a couple of milestones for the company founded in 1992. It's the first time businesses can purchase a Boston Dynamics robot directly. It's also the company's first online sales offering. Spot is only for sale in the U.S. for commercial and industrial use, but the company hopes to expand internationally this year. "We plan to manufacture around a thousand Spots in the next year but can increase that based on the demand," a Boston Dynamics spokesperson told VentureBeat. "We are exploring opportunities for enabling sales overseas this year." The company was originally planning to finish building 1,000 Spots by mid-2020, but the coronavirus pandemic disrupted that timeline.
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If you have a set of 96 sockets, and 95 of them are in the box, the missing socket will always be 10mm and will always be the one you need.
Except in America, where it will always by 3/8 inch.
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a mechanic for.. micromachines?
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"Spot, go fetch me that 3mm socket"
If it can find and fetch a 10 mm socket, then the $75k price is worth it.
Is a "Spot payload" (Score:2)
Would love a robot Llama (Score:3)
The main use I can see for Boston's stuff, is that at some point I could have a robot "llama", that is to say some kind of pack robot that I could put some things to carry on, like camping or camera gear.
It would probably have to be significantly larger than Spot, and even then I don't know if it would have nearly enough battery to go 10 miles or so...
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Well 90 mins runtime (no payload) * 1.6 m/s top speed = 8640m = 5.37 miles. Add an extra 4.2 kilo battery as payload and you should in theory be close to 10 miles (one way) and still have 10 kg usable payload. But I'm guessing that's doing laps on a flat race track, if you're actually using it in nature my guess is you'll get nowhere near top speed or that power efficiency. Plus you have to deduct for payload, they don't give numbers for that. Most likely it can carry a candy bar for you.
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But I'm guessing that's doing laps on a flat race track, if you're actually using it in nature my guess is you'll get nowhere near top speed or that power efficiency.
I can tell you straight up that I am getting no-where near 1.6 m/s top speed myself, so the robot can only go as fast as I do (though I guess theoretically you could send it ahead to a campsite if it just had equipment).
Also there is that one-way issue... but I'm impressed it's even that close to being useful for long term carrying.
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Want greater efficiency, rotating legs makes more sense than hopping leg. Nature struggles with rotation, no connection points but for machines less of a problem. So you attach say three legs minimum to a centrally rotating mounting. You now push out the leg at no load, rotate through, impact the ground and continue the rotation to move the robot forward, springing in the leg taking the load. As you rotate the assembly faster, centrifugal action spins the legs out creating greater efficiency of motion. Four
$75,400? (Score:2)
Supply and demand.
In all contexts.
I'll leave it there.
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I think this may be the robotics equivalent of a developer board. Most of the units sold (if any) won't be purchased to perform a useful task, but to be the object of study and research.
If you had an actual OEM type application for this thing you'd contact Boston Dynamics and negotiate a price based on buying them in quantity.
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I do try to have my posts have both the direct literal level, and also what I'm getting at, yes.
That one was considerably less dull with the addition of a little meta.
3 ... 2 ... 1 ... (Score:3)
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As long as the get the licensed fleshlight attachment; what a man and his robot dog do in the bedroom is between no one besides the man and his robot dog.
$ 74,500 lol (Score:2)
Time to get the f**in slippers (Score:2)
This will be a complete failure. (Score:2)
They'll sell a whopping two of them. I get they need to recoup some engineering costs, but I can buy a sweet daddy car for that price which most certainly costs far more to manufacture than this robot.
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Need to see the price of the robots it can replace.
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They'll sell a whopping two of them. I get they need to recoup some engineering costs, but I can buy a sweet daddy car for that price which most certainly costs far more to manufacture than this robot.
I think you underestimate the number of odd needs around the world. Like if all the world's oil platforms and nuclear plants bought one each for inspections they'd have their 1000 customers already. They're not pretending it's a mass market product, the user manual is pretty... direct:
Active Motors
Fingers may break or get amputated if caught in joints while Spot's motors are active. Stay at least 2m away when Spot is powered on (except to press the lockout or power buttons).
Top of page 12 [bostondynamics.com] if anyone wants to double check.
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Two of them? Are you fucking kidding? If I had the available cash (and no wife) I'd be standing in line saying "HERE!! TAKE MY MONEY NOW!!"
Spot can walk a pre-programmed route, badge a card reader, and open doors. With that ability it can replace three shifts of $40,000/year + benefits security patrol guards, and you won't have to worry about Spot finding an out of the way corner to take a nap or falling off the loading dock while sneaking a cigarette. If I had the independent business mindset I would b
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Two of them? Are you fucking kidding? If I had the available cash (and no wife) I'd be standing in line saying "HERE!! TAKE MY MONEY NOW!!"
It sounds like financial acumen isn't a strong suit. Hence why you probably don't have any money.
Spot can walk a pre-programmed route, badge a card reader, and open doors. With that ability it can replace three shifts of $40,000/year + benefits security patrol guards, and you won't have to worry about Spot finding an out of the way corner to take a nap or falling off the loading dock while sneaking a cigarette.
Not exactly. And who is going to be sitting there watching the cameras from all of these spots? Paid humans. Who is going to respond to anything these cameras see? Paid humans. Although the criminals will probably just steal your spot too and run away before they paid humans get there.
And let's not forget how poor the battery life is on these spots. They'll need to be another paid person to gather them, cha
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Financial acumen? Hell no, I want one because it's the coolest toy I've ever seen. This beats a Parrot drone all to heck. The only way it could be cooler was if it were transported to the surface of the Moon.
I work in physical security (key cards, alarm systems, cameras, etc.) and have dealt with guard staff for most of two decades, I have a pretty good idea of the needs and abilities of the industry, especially data centers since that's where I've worked for about half that time. There are already guar
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No, if we could that would have been done long ago, guard staff is expensive. Cameras aren't smart enough to check to be sure the door is latched, a pressure gauge isn't out of bounds, or an eye wash station needs servicing. They won't alarm on a 3-pixel moving black spot down the hallway, and can't distinguish whether that's a rat or a battery wrapper moving in the ventilation. Some alarms can be set in the camera, such as motion or moved object, but that's time intensive, if the view changes it has to
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They'll sell a whopping two of them. I get they need to recoup some engineering costs, but I can buy a sweet daddy car for that price which most certainly costs far more to manufacture than this robot.
What Boston Dynamics could do is maybe lease out some of these to gather market demand plus allow prospective customers to test use-cases all the while gathering real-world performance feedback.
Oh, wait. They did.
Just a thought... maybe they know more about the market than you do. I'm not saying a company can't make mis-steps and I'm not saying this definitely isn't one. But they're not acting in an information vacuum.
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They're bootstrapping the next gen robotics economy. They'll likely sell two each to major universities, and R&D departments of a handful of Fortune 500 companies. They're planning on selling 1000 for the first run, that sounds about right.
Solar panels used to cost 5x what they do now, per watt. Eventually an industrial grade robot like spot will cost $15,000 while consumer grade robots will cost $2000 in 5-10 years as competitors catch up in the market.
Unfortunately, high strength servo
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They're not selling them at Wallmart
What'd you think the price would be? $74k is basically nothing.
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They'll sell a whopping two of them.
We've already ordered more than 2 of them. We did a trial last year to use the little yellow guy to automate some painfully manual recording processes at one of our sites. I think I even recognise a 2 second snippit of our test in their promotional video :-)
Not sure why you think this has anything to do with buying a "sweet daddy car" whatever that means. If you're comparing buying this thing to buying something for your own home enjoyment you're so far from the target market that I wonder why you even both
Special Order incoming (Score:1)
Re:Special Order incoming (Score:5, Funny)
Bionic zoo? (Score:1)
Or maybe someone will start a bionic zoo and charge people to look at them play?
"Here is the 1st gen and here is the 3rd gen, chasing each other..."
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Only if your furniture is small and made of marshmallows. Two of them together have a payload of like 80 pounds. And you'd still have to program them to work in tandem. :)
Dangerous occupations / situations (Score:2)
I bet Boots & Coots would have a use for them.
Really anywhere that's particularly dangerous for a person to go.
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How many techs does a million square foot data center have just walking around doing nothing but temperature and humidity checks and looking for blinking hard drive failure lights/alarms? One or two per shift, 24x7x365. How many security guards in that data center just doing patrols and checking doors? The same. Now multiply that by every other industry with similar needs, such as warehousing, and you have a huge demand.
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How many techs does a million square foot data center have just walking around doing nothing but temperature and humidity checks and looking for blinking hard drive failure lights/alarms? One or two per shift, 24x7x365.
If you know how to properly manage a data center that answer is exactly zero. And should never be more than zero. That should all be handled by remote monitoring systems. If you have people walking a data center looking for blinking lights, you should be fired. ;-)
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Then you need to fire the staff of every major AWS and Azure data center (probably Google and IBM as well, but I've never worked there). Automated systems are nice but they're not reliable. I've worked with large data centers for over a decade, if they were left to automation they'd all crash and burn.
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There are a number of guard patrol robots out there that are intended for office spaces and such, **BUT** they can't badge and open doors. Data centers have lots of secure doors that take some amount of force to open because of air pressure. They have gauges at various levels that need to be read, such as UPS battery monitors, hot/cold aisle temperature sensors, eye wash station latches, water pressure gauges, and the like as well. A Cobalt or other brand security patrol robot can't handle the needs of a
I'll wait for the ecosystem (Score:2)
Green lights (Score:2)
What happens when they turn red?
But is he a good boy? (Score:2)
Otherwise it's too expensive.
Like a Dog, but for Killing People (Score:2)
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I am sure that people will add firearms to these things.
But those laser-guided bullets will be made of a [hard] rubber compound...
Riot cops sit two miles away eating donuts and playing FPS. What could go wrong.
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Nah, Blackwater/Xe/Academi/[whatever it's name is this week] already sells a tracked automated vehicle with a belt fed heavy machine gun auto-aimed by motion sensing camera for "perimeter patrol". Currently it still requires a human bean to press the fire button, but removing that necessity is just a software edit. I believe Shell planned to deploy them in Nigeria, but I'm not positive that it was completed.
DI Guy was first online sales for Boston Dynamics (Score:1)
I could be wrong, but I believe that DI Guy was sold online by Boston Dynamics (before DI Guy was sold off to MAK).
Marilyn Monrobot? (Score:1)
Black Mirror (Score:2)
After seeing the Black Mirror episode with armed robot guard dogs, based on the Boston Robotics dogs, I’d rather stay away.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Free shipping for a while? (Score:1)
Doesn't he self deliver then?! I'm assuming we're assigning them to be "good bois" anyway.