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Comment by hugofloss | Hacker News Reader

Looks very cool, but what would be common use cases for this robot? Could it carry bags to base camp on everest?

There is a European company with a similar robot (sorry, can't remember the name, but I have seen the robot up close). They actually have a business model! (BD's business model seems to be asking the DOD for more research funds....)

Anyway, this other company leases them for plant inspections -- think large chemical processing plant inspections. Currently, some person in a hard-hat wanders around the plant looking at gauges and sniffing for leaks every hour. Robot can carry a back-pack full of gas sensors, and a camera that can look at a 25-year-old gauge and feed computer vision OCR software that turns that into a data log.

Edit: My brain woke up. Here it is: https://www.anybotics.com/anymal-legged-robot/

Going for a walk, billionaire-style?

https://cdn.geekwire.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/180319-b...

The only way this picture could get any better was if the house in the background was exploding.

Physical security. On a five year depreciation schedule, even assuming multiple units for continuity, you’re ahead of labor costs in certain areas.

I could also see Royal Caribbean buying them as novelties to go along with their robotic bartenders on their oasis class ships.

Except someone would try to steal/destroy it and it couldn’t do anything, so not really. Maybe in a decade or two.

Just mount a remote controlled weapon for self defence! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNPJMk2fgJU

A security guard that gets paid $15 an hour can't do anything but call the police either.

I mean, they often have guns. So they could do something if really necessary.

Depends on the country and what they're guarding. Most places you can only fire on people to protect humans and not property so if Spot is the only one there it won't matter anyway.

Plus it could probably kick the shit out of someone if the software allowed it.

Did Royal Caribbean ever get the robotic bartenders to actually work? When I got to see one in action several years ago it spent far more time either outright down or in a half broken state where it messed up orders than it did actually working. Not to mention it being much slower than a human bartender when it was operational.

They are a maintenance nightmare (a friend works there).

Moving building materials "the last mile" in places like Swiss mountains where they currently hire helicopters to move such materials.

Max payload is only 31lbs unfortunately

In a fleet, or at least all the time, that's not so bad. Get 6 running, shifts of 2, you can haul quite a bit in a week with some electricity.

At that price point what is it better than? A human can carry significantly more for a fraction of the price. 31 lbs is essentially nothing.

A robot that works a 1% the rate is still cost effective if he's 0.9% of the price. Those helicopters are hired at hundreads of thousands of Euros per day and billed for minutes -- they can lift a lot of the materials in a single trip. Probably will have to wait for a more heavy duty Spot though for this use case.

a human porter can carry 30lbs and hike through any mountain trails that this robot can - it'd be a lot cheaper to hire some people than to buy a $70k robot. people can also operate for longer than 90 minutes.

the helicopters are necessary because they need to carry large loads that can't be divided up, which a robot with a 30lb capacity can't help with.

> hike through any mountain trails this robot can

With improvements in programming, that's not necessarily true considering they have four legs.

> people can also operate for longer than 90 minutes.

Note that the 90 minutes is without payload. With payload it's likely much shorter.

They could carry little barrels of brandy to reanimate distressed travelers, like St. Bernards.

https://www.nga.gov/collection/art-object-page.220510.html

https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/20908/why-are-st-bernard...

Maybe little flasks of dex, apropos of today's covid treatment news.

They make great best friends for anthropomorphic robots.

going with outside novelty anywhere you need to see but have no other method to safely navigate it? I could see rescue groups experimenting with them.

if not simply going through a building looking for people or stuff that should not be there.

This model isn't meant for carrying things. The product page mentions "industrial inspection" and "entertainment", whatever that means.

Entertainment, aka "we don't know we just think it's cool"

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