“Its uses can range from power plants, where it is able to understand if there are abnormal temperatures or gas leaks, to natural disasters, it can help rescuers search for survivors.” Emanuele Gherardini, engineer and partner of the digital services company Reply, thus explains the frontiers of use of Spot, the quadruped robot with the unmistakable yellow livery created by Boston Dynamics whose video demonstrations have gone viral on the Internet. At Italian Tech Week 2021, the tech conference attended by Elon Musk, Spot attracted the curiosity of passers-by. “In a training phase he can learn a path and then – explains Gherardini – he is able to reproduce it autonomously, avoiding obstacles and memorizing information about the world around him”. During Itw, for security reasons, Spot was remotely guided by a Reply operator who, following Spot’s “open” philosophy, implemented its structure with camera, sensors and artificial intelligence algorithms: “None of our customers in Italy or in the world – concludes Gherardini – he speaks of substituting robots for human beings. It is a question of assisting man to prevent him from carrying out very dangerous activities “. Companies and developers can buy Spot for uses that do not foresee threats to humans, at a price of $ 74,500.
by Andrea Lattanzi