Boston Dynamics’ four-legged robot Spot has become smarter, with an ungraded version powered by Google’s Gemini artificial intelligence, giving the robot the ability to understand its surroundings, interpret tasks and make decisions with far less human input.
The robotics arm of Hyundai Motor Group on Wednesday released a video on its YouTube channel showing the upgraded Spot using cameras and Google’s visual language model, Gemini Robotics-ER 1.6 to read and understand a handwritten to-do list on a chalkboard.
In the video, Spot carried out the tasks on the list, including placing scattered shoes in a shoe rack, picking up an empty can and throwing into a trash bin and gathering clothes from the floor and placed them in a laundry basket. Spot also checked the status of a mousetrap hidden beneath some furniture and even took a dog for a walk.
A separate video showed Spot carrying out more advanced supervisory and inspection tasks in a manufacturing facility.
The company said the performance gains came from integrating Google’s Gemini Robotics model with Boston Dynamic’s robot software program Orbit and its AI Visual Inspection Learning feature.
Boston Dynamics said that Gemini's enhanced reasoning capabilities enable Spot to perform more sophisticated tasks right away. By analyzing data gathered through Spot’s sensors with Gemini, it can better understand complicated environments, judge situations, and interpret the context of a task.
sahn@heraldcorp.com
