Boston Dynamics’ newest robot can load your dishwasher

We see SpotMini loading a dishwasher, suggesting that it might be capable of being useful.

I’m not even sure why it’s so amusing, but watching a video of what is essentially a high-tech robot dog slip on a banana peel just makes me laugh.

The robot, called SpotMini, is a smaller version of the famously brutalized Spot, and is sometimes equipped with a mechanical arm-which looks like a neck-and a mechanical hand-which looks like a head.

This little mechanical engineering wonder looks like a odd four-legged creature.

SpotMini can climb stairs, walk below tables and chairs, and even coordinate with other robots as to avoid running into each other. The robot is all-electric with no hydraulics. It also includes several sensors such as depth cameras, solid state gyro (IMU) and the proprioception sensors which all together help in flawless navigation and mobile manipulation. According to Boston Dynamics, the robot can go for 90 minutes on one charge, depending on what it’s doing. These sensors help with navigation and mobile manipulation.

Previous Boston Dynamics robots, such as BigDog and AlphaDog, were originally designed for military use. vThese 4-legged machines would as a sort of robotic “pack mule” that could carry around 400 pounds of equipment in the field. vHowever, field tests proved these robots to be inefficient, as the robot was too loud, potentially giving away its position to the enemy. Check out the sleek and interesting design in the video below and speak you rmin don it after the jump. stay tuned for much more from the Boston Dynamics Team coming very soon!

Using various sensors, it can perform tasks on its own, “but often uses a human for high-level guidance”, according to a description on the company’s YouTube channel.

Boston Dynamics was acquired by Google in 2013, and earlier this year rumours emerged, that Alphabet, its parent company was looking for a buyer. Is a shift to smaller robots is an undertaking to have an vast market product?