Boston Dynamics' 'Spot' Is A Walking, Tumbling Robot Dog

Why Does Everyone Keep Kicking This Robot Dog?

The Google-owned, maybe-terrifying Boston Dynamics robotics lab has a new automaton it’s kicking around the office.

Literally.

‘Spot’ is a 160-lb version of its previous experiments in four-legged, all-terrain robotics, and for some reason Boston Dynamics appears obsessed with kicking it.

The electrically-powered bot is self-balancing, which is pretty important given its main role is to transport heavy goods over long distances. But that also means its engineers appear in this video to really enjoy attempting to topple it over. So that's why they're kicking it -- it's to prove it won't trip over when it encounters a goat. Or a rock. Or a mean human engineer with too much time on their hands.

Ah well. As we saw yesterday, the robot uprising is almost here anyway - probably best we have some fun while we can.

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