What is the first thing that comes to your mind when one says robot? What does a robot look like in your mind? Would you like to have a pet robot?
One of the most endearing and jaw dropping robots of all time is a dog called Spot. A product of the company Boston dynamics, Spot is the most advanced quadrupedal robot in the world.
The robot has two cameras on the front and one on each side. This enables 360-degree vision and obstacle avoidance as these help it understand where to place its foot when it is making the next step. Due to its reliance on optical navigation, in low visibility conditions, such as fog, the robot moves clumsily and less accurately.
Although Spot was initially funded by the military, Boston Dynamics markets Spot as an Industrial Robot. Spot’s more famous humanoid robot companion, Atlas, often gets a lot of coverage, although arguably, Spot is better suited for practical applications. Spot’s four legs and metal armour make it possible to use in harsh environments like blistering cold, toxic nuclear wastelands and other hazardous environments. Because of its inherent stability and low height clearance from the ground, the robot has considerable advantage over machines with wheels or chains making it ideal for rescue missions from earthquake rumble. Spot can autonomously plan stair climbing and other similar activities that are almost impossible to do with wheeled robots.
Earlier this year, the art group MSCHF, who for the past few years, have been behind some of the Internet’s most viral stunts, stories, and popular products, have managed to buy a Spot robot (for dollars!) to use it for an art project.
Although MSCHF products are generally meant to poke fun at everything and anything, the project they put up with the adorable Spot shed a rather alarming light on the various uses of how Spot and similar robots.
MSCHF created an interactive art installation called ‘Spot’s rampage’ involving the use of a remotely controlled Spot robot onto which they mounted a custom-made paintball gun. Viewers from all over the world were given the opportunity to move the robot around and shoot paint balls at artworks in the gallery. Although seemingly harmless, the connotations of danger into how robots like Spot can be rather easily manipulated to shoot and destroy their surroundings from a distance was clear.
Art often serves as the canary in the mine, pointing out issues that may seem fantastical at the time they were created but often, life imitates art. In this case, we hope that such artistic expressions of creativity prevent us from turning such scenarios into reality.
