Boston Dynamics has just released its Spot robot with a starting price of $74,500. For now, only US-based businesses or educational institutions can purchase Spot. Have $74,500 lying around? Then this is the robot you need in your life.
Spot comes in three different versions, Explorer, Enterprise, and Academic. Explorer is the only model you are able to directly buy from the website and requires a $1,000 refundable deposit at checkout. It will also take six to eight weeks for Spot to be delivered. You do have to be a business or educational institution to purchase Spot currently and it is only available in the US store.
Boston Dynamics lists Spot’s use cases as construction, oil, gas, electricity, mining, for public safety and healthcare, research, and entertainment. A majority of these cases allow people to remove themselves from potentially dangerous situations by letting Spot remotely work for them. It is also interesting to see Spot being pitched for use in the entertainment industry.
Pricing
Spot starts at $74,500 with various upgrades and modules that can be purchased on top of that. With the stock version of Spot, you get the robot itself, two battery packs, a charger, tablet controller, a case for Spot, and a power-case for the batteries.
Spot also comes with Python client packages for the Spot APIs and supports future software updates as they are made available. Spot also has a 12-month warranty and if you purchase it right now you can get free shipping.
If you are looking to expand Spot’s abilities, you can pick up an awareness module for $21,800, which allows Spot to see in full color and communicate better with the world. For another $29,750 you can pick up the inspection payload which adds a pan and tilt camera to the top of Spot allowing you to inspect assets remotely. A LIDAR module is also available for Spot which comes in at $18,450 and provides you with a scanning system to improve the autonomous ability of Spot.
In the fun video released on YouTube by Boston Dynamics, Spot can be seen pulling a semi-truck, falling over many times and recovering, moving in sync with other Spots, and used to measure the temperature of people during COVID-19. The video then shows Spot inspecting a gas line, monitoring its surroundings, and creating a map of an indoor area.
What do you think about Boston Dynamics making Spot available to businesses and education institutions? Let us know in the comments below.
Photo: Boston Dynamics
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