Boston Dynamics' small, four-legged Spot robot has been doing much more than just dancing on TikTok during the pandemic. Over the last year, the robot has been used to do critical patient intake at hospitals and even deliver food, water, or medicine to quarantine facilities to protect healthcare professionals. Beyond the medical field, Spot has been used to disinfect workplaces and even help some people perform on-site jobs remotely.
The company's vice president of business development Michael Perry told Cheddar that before this year, those use cases were not something the team expected for Spot. But he admitted that the biggest benefit of Spot is the robot's ability to change to fit anyone's unique needs. "There are a ton of robots that are designed specifically to work in the hospital setting," Perry said. "But when you started to see triage facilities setting up in parking lots or on the lawns of hospitals, that's where you need a legged robot like Spot to handle that type of complicated terrain and still do something valuable for healthcare providers."
That adaptability is a key component to the robot. Perry said Boston Dynamics is working with partners to explore the use of robots in theme parks or to complete deliveries. "When you start thinking about having a robot that can handle the complex environments that are in our daily lives, the application cases start becoming pretty broad."
One of Spot's top use cases for the company is in high-risk environments. In October, Spot was deployed to Chernobyl by the UK Atomic Energy Authority and the National Centre for Nuclear Robotics at the University of Bristol, equipped with radiation sensors to examine areas that hadn't been accessible to humans for years, explained Perry. The information Spot gathered will help researchers develop heat maps and determine whether it is safe to send in humans. "At the end of the day, one of the things that is most valuable about this technology is its ability to access environments that are otherwise too dangerous to send in a person."
As with any new technology, adoption will be a major hurdle for Boston Dynamics. Perry is confident that it's only a matter of time and understanding to make people comfortable with the animal-like robots. "It was just a few years ago that the notion of a touchscreen seemed magical and mystifying to people, but now it's just a part of our daily lives."
Before we see Spot in our own homes, though, the robot's price tag will have to drop. Right now the little, yellow bot costs $74,500 before any custom, job-specific add-ons that would raise the price. Perry said engineers will need to find capabilities that can be cut for general use that will drop the cost.
"It's as good on a construction site as it is in Chernobyl," Perry said. "I'm pretty certain that most people don't need that level of reliability in their day-to-day lives so we'll need to understand where some of the tradeoffs, the engineering decisions [can] make the technology more accessible to more people."
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A Michigan judge is putting sponges in the hands of shoplifters and ordering them to wash cars in a Walmart parking lot when spring weather arrives. Genesee County Judge Jeffrey Clothier hopes the unusual form of community service discourages people from stealing from Walmart. The judge also wants to reward shoppers with free car washes. Clothier says he began ordering “Walmart wash” sentences this week for shoplifting at the store in Grand Blanc Township. He believes 75 to 100 people eventually will be ordered to wash cars this spring. Clothier says he will be washing cars alongside them when the time comes.
The State Department had been in talks with Elon Musk’s Tesla company to buy armored electric vehicles, but the plans have been put on hold by the Trump administration after reports emerged about a potential $400 million purchase. A State Department spokesperson said the electric car company owned by Musk was the only one that expressed interest back in May 2024. The deal with Tesla was only in its planning phases but it was forecast to be the largest contract of the year. It shows how some of his wealth has come and was still expected to come from taxpayers.
At 100 years old, the Goodyear Blimp is an ageless star in the sky. The 246-foot-long airship will be in the background of the Daytona 500 — flying roughly 1,500 feet above Daytona International Speedway, actually — to celebrate its greatest anniversary tour. Even though remote camera technologies are improving regularly and changing the landscape of aerial footage, the blimp continues to carve out a niche. At Daytona, with the usual 40-car field racing around a 2½-mile superspeedway, views from the blimp aptly provide the scope of the event.
You'll just have to wait for interest rates (and prices) to go down. Plus, this deal's a steel, the big carmaker wedding is off, and bribery is back, baby!
It’s a chicken-and-egg problem: Restaurants are struggling with record-high U.S. egg prices, but their omelets, scrambles and huevos rancheros may be part of the problem. Breakfast is booming at U.S. eateries. First Watch, a restaurant chain that serves breakfast, brunch and lunch, nearly quadrupled its locations over the past decade to 570. Fast-food chains like Starbucks and Wendy's added more egg-filled breakfast items. In normal times, egg producers could meet the demand. But a bird flu outbreak that has forced them to slaughter their flocks is making supplies scarcer and pushing up prices. Some restaurants like Waffle House have added a surcharge to offset their costs.
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