How Boston Dynamics' Robot Dogs Are Put to Use in Real World Scenarios

Everyone knows Boston Dynamics as the team that builds the robot dogs admired around the world. The dogs, known as Spot, are capable of opening doors, playing fetch, and even dancing like Mick Jagger — all of which is fantastically silly and fun. 

In this video, however, we see the bots put to good, practical use in an Austrian hydroplant. What do they do? Well, inspections, of course.

At full capacity, 150 tonnes of water is processed from the plant's uphill reservoir every second, meaning any errors in the system could be catastrophic.

The robot dogs are equipped with cameras that allow them to inspect the plant's many features. In fact, the whole plant is run remotely. Switching it on and off is all done from a control center about half an hour's drive away where staff also control twenty other plants.

No one works at these hydroplants but they still need to be investigated daily to make sure everything runs smoothly. That's where Boston Dynamics' robot dogs come in.

How do the engineers program these robot dogs? What tasks do they undertake? How do they get to and back from the hydroplants? What do they do if they actually discover something wrong? This video answers all these questions and more, bringing you footage of the robots in action.