Boston Dynamics, a Robotics affiliate of Hyundai Motor Group, unveiled new features of its four-legged walking robot Spot combined with Google artificial intelligence (AI) Gemini.
In a video posted on Boston Dynamics' YouTube channel on the 14th (local time), a to-do list is written on a chalkboard at home. Spot used its onboard camera and Gemini to check and recognize it on its own.
Following commands, Spot tidied up shoes scattered at the front door into the shoe cabinet and picked up an empty can to put it in the trash. It also picked up clothes on the floor to put them in the laundry basket and checked the condition of a mousetrap under furniture, sequentially carrying out the activities on the list.
Walking the dog was added to the to-do list. Spot opened the door, went outside, grabbed the leash, and walked the dog.
When they came upon a snowfield while walking, Spot let go of the dog's leash and threw a ball far to try to play. But when the dog did not respond, Spot ended up going to pick up the ball itself.
Another video Boston Dynamics released shows Spot performing a strengthened role in supervision and monitoring in real industrial settings through the application of Google's Gemini.
In the video, Spot detects a puddle of water on the floor and issues a warning. It also finds a gauge with a needle indicating temperature and answers what the current temperature is, showing it can interpret on-site data and provide insights.
Boston Dynamics said on its blog that Spot's newfound smarts were made possible through collaboration with Google.
It integrated the AI feature "AI Visual Inspection Learning (AIVI-Learning)" of Boston Dynamics' robot software platform "Orbit" with Google's robot AI "Gemini Robotics ER 1.6."
To evolve beyond the simple stage of merely "seeing" in complex industrial environments to understanding, judging, and acting autonomously, Boston Dynamics adopted Google's AI dedicated to robots. As a result, Orbit has gained higher-level reasoning abilities and can perform more complex visual analyses.
With this update, Spot now has the foundation to become an intelligent robot capable of complex environment perception, situational judgment, and task context understanding by analyzing and interpreting surrounding information collected through various sensors with Gemini.
For Spot, new functions have been added such as measuring via gauge checks on-site and counting the number of pallets. The accuracy of visual inspection tasks, including reading digital screens, has also improved significantly, yielding overall enhancements in inspection performance.
Through non-stop upgrades, the AI model can be continuously updated without separate system downtime and can automatically keep improving inspection accuracy without separate operator intervention.
Transparency in the AI's decision-making process has also been strengthened. Users can directly check the AI's process of deriving results and its grounds for judgment through prompts, enabling higher reliability in real-world application.
The industry expects that collaboration between Boston Dynamics and Google will raise the significance of AI use in the Robotics field by a notch. As in the videos Boston Dynamics released, robots will be able to understand image-, video-, and text-based information in an integrated way, dramatically expanding their industrial utility.
Marco Da Silva, head of Spot product development at Boston Dynamics, said, "Thanks to new features like gauge reading and more accurate judgment, Spot will become a truly autonomous robot that can directly understand and respond to problems in the workplace."