A Spot On Review of the Boston Dynamics Robot Dog

Tech video producer Marques Brownlee (previously) of MXBHD traveled to Boston in order to spend some time with Spot, the robot dog created by Boston Robotics that is now available for $74,500.00.

Well-armed with the concern about robots taking over the world as demonstrated in the Black Mirror episode “Metalhead”, Brownlee kept an open mind as he took Spot for a walk, hop and jump in the company parking lot, watching how Spot moved depending on the situation at hand. He also documented how the four-legged robot corrects itself when a misstep is made.

What happens when spot fails? Well, as you can see he’s gotten pretty good at this whole self-righting thing to get back up. So if he’s fallen down, he can self-right even if he’s upside down. He can flip back over and as we saw a lot of times, he’ll catch himself before he’s actually fallen in the first place. So he does a pretty good job of avoiding failure but if he does fail he has a move to get out of it

Spot Review Failure Marques Brownlee

All in all, Brownlee had a very good day with Spot and had at least one fear put to rest.

Now if after seeing all this you’re still concerned about the potential future from that ‘Black Mirror’ episode, don’t worry the people who work here have seen that episode and they have no intention of creating or allowing a future where robots just take over the world.

Lori Dorn
Lori Dorn

Lori is a Laughing Squid Contributing Editor based in New York City who has been writing blog posts for over a decade. She also enjoys making jewelry, playing guitar, taking photos and mixing craft cocktails.