Boston Dynamics offers SpotMini robot for sale in 2019

Boston Dynamics has announced that it will start selling its SpotMini robot starting next year. The four-legged robot can walk around in a natural way and can be used by users for different purposes.

Marc Raibert, the company’s president, announced the decision during an interview with TechCrunch. Raibert will not say how much the robot will cost, but he does say that the cost of the version shown earlier this week was a factor of ten lower than the original prototype. However, the focus is mainly on business customers, which can indicate that the costs are outside the budget of an average consumer.

What the potential customers will do with the robot is left to the users. Boston Dynamics sees the robot as a hardware and software platform, with physical mounting points and an API, allowing users to connect their own parts to the robot.

Boston Dynamics itself is working on some applications to serve as a reference. As an example, the company provides a surveillance package, in which cameras for the dark are connected to the back and arm of the robot.

During the interview, the company shows a demo of the SpotMini. Raibert indicates that the robot arm is an option that can be purchased with the robot at an additional cost. The ‘hand’ on the arm can be stabilized in relation to the posture or movements of the rest of the robot. The company previously showed that the arm can be used to open a door.

Boston Dynamics is an American robot company that specializes in robots that can balance and walk in a ‘natural’ way. The company was acquired by Google in 2013, which it sold to the Japanese company Softbank in 2017, due to the lack of a salable product.