Code your own robot

“There is a part of a humanity that loves to worry about robots taking over or being weaponized or something like that. We definitely want to counter that narrative. We’re not interested in weaponized robots. ”

— Marc Raibert , ex-CEO BostonDynamics

You may not have to wait that long to start programming those amazing robots you saw from Boston Dynamics! One of their top models, SPOT is now available for sale (there’s even a contact sales button the page :)) with its open source SDK

So those scifi movies that we’ve been consuming all our lives are starting to be not so scifi anymore! We’ve not played with the SDK yet, but would love to if we can ever get our hands on one those dog-robots, but here’s a quick summary of what we know from our reading up. Could be wrong on some and definitely things are moving fast here so keep an eye on their site for news if you are as excited about this as us (and you should be).

The SDK

The SDK is in Python!

The SDK let’s developers and hobbyists to interface with the robot and develop custom applications that lets Spot to do tasks. Developers who doesn’t have the actual robots can still be able to view the SDK and existing early adopters can open source their applications that can then be built upon by the community.

With the SDK, developers can create custom API for controlling the robot, io on sensor information and feed into into data analysis tools/AI, and design custom payloads to expand the capabilities.

Googling around gives one example of a company already using the SDK to do something - HoloBuilder is using the SDK to integrate Spot into their existing app - that lets workers use a phone to teach Spot a path around a construction site and then Spot will navigate that path and take 360 images.

Robots can be rented!

Great, we have the SDK, but how do we get the robot? The good news is that if you manage to become a member of their Early Adopter program (there must be a million contenders for it already :( ) then you could actually get “leased” robot from them.

Here’s them saying it in their own word: “Developers will still need to become part of the Early Adopter Program to lease the robot to execute their code…”.

SPOT is loaded

Spot comes with a lot of features - VR control, automated registration of laser-scanning, connecting Spot’s data to cloud work order services, using Edge computing to help Spot semantically understand its environment, and much more.

The first user conference

In addition to open-sourcing announcing their SDK release BostonDynamics also said they are arranging the first-ever user conference for their platform, Actuate 2020. Set to take place May 12-13 in Boston, Massachusetts. Sadly it will be invite only. But that’s expected. But May is only a few months away.

Exciting times!