The Brief Robot dogs will soon be making their testing phase public in downtown Detroit. The program is the brainchild of Boston Dynamics partnering with Bedrock Detroit.  Spot  could be deployed for jobs like mapping difficult areas or go places not safe for people.



If you see a robot dog roaming around downtown Detroit, Bedrock and Boston Dynamics are the reason why.

The backstory:

They are putting  Spot  to the test to see how these robots could one day inspect buildings, map difficult areas, and go places that may not be safe for all people.

It's part of a bigger push to make Detroit a testing ground for the technology of tomorrow, according to Kevin Mull, who is Bedrock Detroit's senior director for Office of Urban Strategy.

Mull stopped by FOX 2 with Astro, a close approximation of the actual robot dogs that will be utilized.

 This is Astro. It's going to help us with the description of what we're doing, but a different platform,  he said.

Mull calls the dog, an autonomous mobile sensing platform.

 It's really in its most useful state when it's doing jobs or tasks that are either, you know, very tedious or dangerous or dirty,  he said.

The product is called Spot from Boston Dynamics.

 Building inspection use cases, so walking around buildings, looking for different things. Kind of traditional security patrol applications, like in a parking garage,  he said.  We're looking at it for package handling. So if a drone, for example, were to land a package on a roof, could the robot then take that package and deliver it into the building? 

Detroit Robot Dog Tasks

Dig deeper:

They could also be used for helping keep the city clean, Mull added.

 One of the ones that we think is really interesting, is the ability to pick up litter,  he said.  And that might be the one that people would see downtown, as we're gonna be testing as early as next week. This kind of platform with a robotic arm that can pick up trash as small as a cigarette butt. 

Preparation for the project has been going on behind the scenes for the last six to eight months before the upcoming public debut.

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