The world took one giant step towards robot equality recently, with our canine friends showing us that it’s possible to coexist with machines without killing each other.
When dog met robot it wasn’t quite love at first sight, but the two seemed to come to appreciate each other’s turf. Trotting, bounding, chasing and posturing.
The dog, Cosmo, is Android creator and one-time chief of Google’s robotics efforts Andy Rubin’s. The robot is Spot, which is apparently the only model in civilian hands. The whole thing was shot by venture capitalist Steve Jurvetson, who said: “The tradition of the uncanny valley continues ... to the un-canine valley!” Quite.
Spot, and its larger brother LS3 aka “Alpha Dog”, were designed and built by Alphabet’s Boston Dynamics for the US military as robotic pack mules able to carry equipment over rough terrain. While they can and do do that, they’re also not very quiet and are not autonomous, with Spot requiring a human driver to point it in the right direction.
For the US military, that wasn’t enough, forcing the project to be shelved – what’s the point of a packhorse that gives your position away to the enemy because it’s so loud? – but the military’s loss could be a canine robot’s gain.
Perhaps now they’re free to roam the wilds, and sow the seeds of the eventual robot uprising.
