Spot,the robot dog, with FARO S class laser scanner on top

Discuss FARO hardware here.
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ddustin
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Re: Spot,the robot dog, with FARO S class laser scanner on top

Post by ddustin »

Kolt45 wrote: Sat Jul 11, 2020 12:49 am As of now Spot looks great but it is one of the early products of its kind. From what I heard it needs a "dog-walker". Someone essentially needs to program it how to move around, set it off, make sure it does not get stuck anywhere, etc. Not sure this is true but battery life on it is 60-90 minutes too. It means you get a dog for 75k then need to hire a person to take care of it and buy a scanner to mount on top. Why not just have a scanning guy with a scanner to do the same job faster?

It is more of a marketing stunt that a feasible model as of now. I hope in 5-10 years we will get to the point where it will make sense.

On the other hand - have you seen Brain Corp self driving cleaning robots at Walmarts? I feel like those could be a great fit in retail / office environments to mount scanners in them. They are taller too.
Marek,
It's actually quite far along. I'm not at liberty to say more except it's not a marketing stunt I can assure you.
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Re: Spot,the robot dog, with FARO S class laser scanner on top

Post by gsisman »

ddustin wrote: Sat Jul 11, 2020 12:11 pm
Kolt45 wrote: Sat Jul 11, 2020 12:49 am As of now Spot looks great but it is one of the early products of its kind. From what I heard it needs a "dog-walker". Someone essentially needs to program it how to move around, set it off, make sure it does not get stuck anywhere, etc. Not sure this is true but battery life on it is 60-90 minutes too. It means you get a dog for 75k then need to hire a person to take care of it and buy a scanner to mount on top. Why not just have a scanning guy with a scanner to do the same job faster?

It is more of a marketing stunt that a feasible model as of now. I hope in 5-10 years we will get to the point where it will make sense.

On the other hand - have you seen Brain Corp self driving cleaning robots at Walmarts? I feel like those could be a great fit in retail / office environments to mount scanners in them. They are taller too.
Marek,
It's actually quite far along. I'm not at liberty to say more except it's not a marketing stunt I can assure you.
Well if you want another test site, Dave, you can come to DC area. I got a bunch of very old (80-100 yr old) large Concrete box drains (7-20 feet wide0 in Montgomery County that need scan located and inspected -and running in confined-space apparatus and trained personnel with mobile scanners is not really realistic......
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'Fluffy' aka 'Spot the robot dog', changes spots on top

Post by Scott »

https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/fo ... it-factory
Ford Uses Robot Dogs To Map Plant, Human Surveyors No Longer Needed
"Ford Motor Company is set to abandoned traditional human surveyors for robot dogs with sensors to laser map a production plant ahead of retooling.

Ford partnered with Boston Dynamics to digitally map its Van Dyke Transmission Plant in Michigan. The data will enable engineers to retool the plant for future products. The ability to use robot dogs, outfitted with sensors, is a much timelier and cost-effective approach than using human surveyors".
Cont... see video, link above.

P.S. The timing really sucks, IMHO, after a week of horrific GDP reports in the USA and Germany. Sorry, Fluff-Spot, no bone for you!
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Re: Spot,the robot dog, with FARO S class laser scanner on top

Post by Leandre Robitaille »

I find it funny how ford is selling this as if they are saving money by having this done with a drone dog
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Re: Spot,the robot dog, with FARO S class laser scanner on top

Post by Scott »

Spot should stick to surveying:
https://www.blacklistednews.com/article ... draft.html
Robots authorized to kill in San Francisco police draft policy
Excerpt:
Peskin, chair of the committee, initially attempted to limit the SFPD’s authority over the department’s robots by inserting the sentence, “Robots shall not be used as a Use of Force against any person.”

The following week, the police struck out his suggestion with a thick red line.

This could mark a legal Rubicon for the city: robot use-of-force has never before been either approved or prohibited in San Francisco. A version of this draft policy was unanimously accepted by the rules committee last week and will come before the full board on Nov. 29.

...cont

Related Articles:
Tuesday, October 18, 2022 - OAKLAND COPS HOPE TO ARM ROBOTS WITH LETHAL SHOTGUNS
IN A SERIES of little noted Zoom meetings this fall, the city of Oakland, California, grappled with a question whose consequences could shape the future of American policing: Should cops be able to kill people with shotgun-armed robots?
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Re: Spot,the robot dog, with FARO S class laser scanner on top

Post by akeane »

I have watched the spot development with great detail and all i can say is, who is this for??

Is it for surveyors?
Is the quality of the scan not an issue when its being supported by something that is balancing itself frequently? is it not faster to walk it around? is the view angle not an issue? is having spot in the lower 10 degrees of all scans not an issue for cloud to cloud registration?

Is it for production?
Commonly what gets posted is this idea that the workplace will be able to have a frequently updated model of the yard/building site by having a path that spot takes weekly to routinely map it out. Who would rather look at that than just walk out to site once a while? or make a phone call to confirm? is it to make sure the pipes went in the wall before it is giprocked? Would production even have the capability to process the insurmountable data?

Is it for unsafe zone mapping?
Why not use a drone? when spot slips and falls in the middle of a unsafe tunnel, I'm out a 120k dog and a 40k scanner.

If you're talking targetless mobile scanning, surely slam mobile scanners are a better option? I've seen an entire cargoship get mapped out in 2 hours, i dont think spot would make it over the bulkheads.

I get it, the dog is cool as anything, an i want to see it implemented more. But im constantly seeing videos claiming massive time savings over conventional methods, and then immediately cutting to spot with a surveyor off to the side to escort/drive it at all times in case the battery dies or if falls over, or the scanning parameters need to be changed.

What is the market? what is the intention? in what scenario would i need dimensionally dubious, angularly restrictive, noisy data machine that needs to be charged every 60 minutes? my offsider needs 1 can of red bull and he's good to go for the next 8 hours.
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Re: Spot,the robot dog, with FARO S class laser scanner on top

Post by Scott »

https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/ri ... tgpt-brain
Rise Of Skynet? Robot Dog Gets ChatGPT Brain

A team of artificial intelligence engineers equipped a Boston Dynamics robot dog with OpenAI's ChatGPT and Google's Text-to-Speech voice, creating what could be a real-life Skynet-like robot.

In a recent video posted to Twitter, machine learning engineer Santiago Valdarrama showed how the robo-dog can interact with humans via a voice interface faster than control panels and reports.

"These robots run automated missions every day," Valdarrama said in a Twitter thread, noting that each mission could be "miles-long, hard-to-understand configuration files" and "only technical people can handle them." When paired with ChatGPT and Google's Text-to-Speech voice, a user can ask simple questions to the robot about "configuration files and the mission results."

"We can now ask the robots about past and future missions and get an answer in real time. ChatGPT interprets the question, parses the files, and formulates the answer," he said.

The ChatGPT brain means anyone can talk to the robo-dog.
In the short term, integrating a ChatGPT brain into robots may appear harmless. However, there's a dark risk to artificial intelligence, giving rise to intelligent robots in a Skynet-like scenario.
--Use link above for (Twitter) short video
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Re: Spot,the robot dog, with FARO S class laser scanner on top

Post by gsisman »

Kolt45 wrote: Sat Jul 11, 2020 12:49 am As a big fan or robotics myself I am really looking forward to "carriers" that are intelligent enough to carry laser scanners throughout buildings on full autonomy.

As of now Spot looks great but it is one of the early products of its kind. From what I heard it needs a "dog-walker". Someone essentially needs to program it how to move around, set it off, make sure it does not get stuck anywhere, etc. Not sure this is true but battery life on it is 60-90 minutes too. It means you get a dog for 75k then need to hire a person to take care of it and buy a scanner to mount on top. Why not just have a scanning guy with a scanner to do the same job faster?

It is more of a marketing stunt that a feasible model as of now. I hope in 5-10 years we will get to the point where it will make sense.

On the other hand - have you seen Brain Corp self driving cleaning robots at Walmarts? I feel like those could be a great fit in retail / office environments to mount scanners in them. They are taller too.
They use these at our local Giant Grocery also
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Re: Spot,the robot dog, with FARO S class laser scanner on top

Post by gsisman »

Leandre Robitaille wrote: Sun Aug 02, 2020 2:23 am I find it funny how ford is selling this as if they are saving money by having this done with a drone dog
It looks good to the stockholders who know nothing of scanning
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