Boston Dynamics Robots Run, Dance and Flip, But Are They a Business?

The National Park service comes to mind. Area's too big and disconnected for cameras + power + network (although you could sat-link the cameras, it'd be expensive).

SpotMini would be great for people with disabilities. I imagine there's a huge market in healthcare for these robots. A seeing-eye or service dog cost $59,600. So if they can get SpotMini down to that price point, I think it could dominate the market.

Much easier to care for a robot than a dog.

I see plenty of usage in automation. Most domestic (US) manufacturing is highly automated, there's simply no way around it. However, for some parts of the factory, tracks/wheels just don't cut it -- think iron works, rougher terrain, variable terrain etc. A bipedal or quadrupedal robot could make lots of sense.

There's also military usage -- if you can build an autonomous robot, it's not not much of a stretch to use those same design chops to augment a human.

Granted, the last one is fairly speculative, but their market is composed entirely of B2B/G and those customers are likely going to get their own highly customized versions of the robots Boston Dynamics produces for a princely sum.

Military, fire fighting + rescue, personal assistants for elderly etc (and perhaps several more). I think military applications are huge. Drones aren't very efficient and probably wont be unless they are radically redesigned.

If you build one that can carry a person, then I could see a large market for people who want to go places that they can't by powered scooter. Like anywhere that has just stairs(friends house), nature trails, etc. Buying one could be almost as cheap as putting in one of those rail elevators in your house.

Some combination of a large x8 design octocopter (4 arms, 8 motors) capable of lifting 10-20kg and transporting it up to 10km away, where it can drop a legged walking robot, could be useful for a great deal of purposes in search and rescue.

One of the things that will be a game changer for SAR robots is high-bandwidth video/remote control literally anywhere on the planet with a satellite signal, at least 400-500 kbps data rates which will be possible with the Iridium NEXT satellite constellation (vs 2.4 kbps right now). Right now such data rates are only possible in areas with decent HSPA+/LTE coverage, which is not where a lot of SAR activity takes place.

Now imagine putting a setup with a high-res visual spectrum camera, a starlight camera, and a FLIR camera on the spot mini for heat sensing/night vision, and having multiple spot mini remote controlled by people walking through trails and searching an area.

the reason legged locomotion dominates terrestrial creatures is simple: uneven terrain. otherwise animals would have wheels, since it's more efficient on relatively flat surfaces.

this is really the only (broad) use case for legged robots, which is why the military is interested in it but BD struggles to find commercial success.

I think infantry is the only answer, really. The army still finds it really essential to have lots of guys walking around on two legs, who can go anywhere their opponents can go. And often carrying a serious weight, because having stuff with you is very useful.

They have lots of tracked things and flying things too, obviously. All of which will be ever more automated, too.

I can see other niches, like carrying wounded hikers out of canyons where you can't fly, but agree that hardly sounds like a billion-dollar industry. Industrial uses I'm more dubious, I mean any warehouse already has a nice flat concrete floor... lots of uses for vision etc. but not so much for walking.

The recent video of stunt robots definitely demonstrates that there's a need for humanoid robots. Probably very niche though.

Assuming the price will come down I think about package delivery implications.

How do I get my Amazon or Uber Eats deliveries in 10 years time? Do I still go to the front door of my building, or does it arrive at my front door or even right into my loungeroom?

Or will we forever be stuck schlepping up and down from our apartments? ;)

They specialize in making robots that can react and behave in dynamic, real world environemnts. There is use cases for them all over - mostly replacing humans in high risk scenarios such as fire fighting or nuclear waste removal/cleanup etc... the tech isnt quite there yet but if theyre allowed continued funding and the time to research they will eventually get there.

I used to work with an astronomical observatory which was located on a mountain (Mauna Kea). When things were running smoothly, the telescope could be controlled entirely remotely, and the observatory itself would be unoccupied. But often some little issue would arise that would require a button to be pushed, or would require some small display to be examined and a small manual adjustment made. Now by far most of the equipment could be reset or power-cycled or programmed remotely - but not everything. So occasionally someone would have to drive up and down a mountain just to push one or more buttons. If there had been a robot that we could control remotely and have it examine a display and push a few buttons, that would have been extremely helpful. If the robot had some onboard test equipment, like a spectrum analyzer, which it could plug into a test point and produce a plot for remote display, it could significantly reduce the grunt-work of technicians. I suspect there are a lot of remote sites for microwave towers etc which could really use a robot dog that could push buttons.

You need to look at this as solving puzzle piece by piece. In essence they are getting better and better at doing sophisticated controllers for multi-DOF robots. Atlas is 35-DOF robot and we get amazed by it. Human body is 230+ DOF mechanism. If they can continue on their current path they might be able to produce very usable robot that can replace human in laborious work. Sure, it’s long way to go but so someone would need to develop this tech nonetheless. Human labor is the largest industry on the planet worth 10s of trillions of dollars and is the biggest bottleneck. A 10 or 20 years investment for a trillion dollar business opportunity definitely makes sense.

They aren't taking DoD contracts. They used to, of course. That mostly stopped when Google bought them.

Yes. A very high level of funding usually isn't sustainable unless you have some way of making money (i.e. you're a business) or you are government-funded (e.g. NASA).

SoftBank has $100B. they didn't give it all to BD...