This article is from WeChat public account: insight Silicon Valley (ID: guigudiyixian) , author: shumin, original title:” Why was Boston Dynamic Robot Dog’s first commercial buyer? Silicon Valley Insight Interview + In-Depth Analysis “, picture from: Original Picture
The “Internet Red” robot dog Spot of AI session finally found the first full-time job.
As one of the most well-known companies in the field of robotics, Boston Dynamics is also a blogger with millions of fans on YouTube. Whenever it releases a new robot video, it gets millions of clicks and triggers a lot of spread. And one of the most popular head anchors is Boston Power Machine Little Yellow Dog Spot.
In September of this year, Boston Dynamics announced the commercialization of Robot Dog Spot. Last week, Spot’s first commercial buyer made its appearance. It was the German startup Holobuilder that Silicon Valley Insight had interviewed.
Holobuilder was founded in 2014, headquartered in Germany, came to Silicon Valley in 2015, and settled in the San Francisco Runway incubator.
So, HWhy did oloBuilder and Boston Dynamic join hands? How about the robot dog Spot in his first official job?
How is the player behind the scenes?
Holobuilder means “holographic builder” in Chinese. As the name suggests, they are a realistic capture solution for architects and engineers to create immersive progress views of construction sites by combining 360-degree panoramic images, computer vision recognition and artificial intelligence. Business.
During the field visit to Holobuilder, the small explorer learned that engineers can upload photos of construction sites taken with 360-degree cameras or ordinary mobile phones to Holobuilder to generate panoramic images.
Then through Holobuilder’s positioning system, engineers can mark the scanned images of different rooms in corresponding positions on the building floor plan. With this 360 ° marking function, engineers can virtually visit the construction site, make notes, and mark issues, eliminating the need to visit the site in person.
For construction teams, using immersive construction site progress views can further increase work efficiency and reduce the time to plan construction documents.
HoloBuilder currently works with approximately 2,000 construction companies on approximately 18,000 projects. itsMany of these are large construction projects, completed by companies such as Hensel Phelps, Bechtel and Skanska. In fact, according to HoloBuilder’s official website data, 59 of the top 100 builders in the United States are HoloBuilder partners.
However, this achievement has not made HoloBuilder satisfied. It hopes to further promote the digitization and automation of the industry and transfer a lot of work captured by reality to the robot platform.
So, when Boston Dynamics announced the commercialization of Robot Dog Spot, HoloBuilder became the first crab-eating partner.
Spot Usage Guide: Use the App to control the route and hand the collected information to the AI for analysis
Spot’s first project is construction of a $ 1.2 billion San Francisco International Airport (SFO) Harvey Mirk Terminal 1 led by builder Hensel Phelps. In this project, Spot’s mission is to conduct surveys and capture image data in 360 degrees.
However, in the site video released this time, Spot does not behave like previous YouTube videos. It can intelligently navigate the space, but requires manual remote control. Fortunately, when Spot is guided through a certain route, it can remember the route, track the route through sensors and automatic technology, and bypass obstacles that appear on the road afterwards.
“Like an ordinary dog, you train it once and tell it you should do it,” said Mostafa Akbari-Hochberg, founder and CEO of HoloBuilder.
The tool for training Spot is HoloBuilder’s smart App SpotWalk.
SpotWalk is operated by engineers, and Spot will walk through the entire construction site and draw a digital map. HoloBuilder will then synchronize Spot’s map with its own digital map to track the progress of the construction site.
At the same time, engineers can also set up a list of locations to let Spot stop here once or twice a day to take new images. In contrast, engineers can do this only once a week. “You can see changes in this place over a period of time to manage it,” Claus said. And the use of SpotWalk is not complicated, many employees said that it took only 30 seconds to learn how to operate Spot Robot.
The images captured by Spot and SpotWalk will be analyzed by HoloBuilder’s machine learning engine SiteAI.
“Suppose we now have the largest set of building images. We can analyze and understand where are dry walls, where are concrete beams, and where are concrete columns,” Akbari-Hochberg said. At the same time, the software can identify the installation of drywall panels and report progress at this stage.
Usually, the image acquisition and analysis of the surveying work at the construction site is often completed by a hand-held camera, which is time-consuming and labor-intensive, and the accuracy cannot be guaranteed. In addition,How to organize such unstructured data is also a big problem. But with SiteAI, these data can be interpreted with machine learning, and the addition of Spot makes it easier to collect images and data.
“This allows human engineers to free up time and do less repetitive tasks,” Claus said.
SpotWalk is the first application for the company ’s robots, according to Michael Perry, vice president of business development for Boston Dynamics. This time, the debut of Robot Dog Spot and SpotWalk at San Francisco International Airport has been recognized by builder Hensel Phelps and the industry, which gave HoloBuilder and Boston Dynamics a peace of mind. In the next six months, HoloBuilder and Boston Dynamics will expand SpotWalk into new testing areas.
Why a building survey?
In addition to HoloBuilder, Boston Dynamics also collaborates with navigation company Trimble and construction products and solutions company Hilti. Through cooperation with the latter two, Boston Dynamics hopes to be able to integrate building management software solutions, global navigation satellite system positioning (GNSS) technology and reality capture Technology is integrated into the Spot robot platform, allowing Spot to communicate directly with cloud-based construction management applications.
The nature of the partner company selected from Boston Dynamics makes it easy to see that the market entry point it finds for the commercial use of Robot Dog Spot is building surveying.
At the Web Summit 2019, Boston Dynamics CEO Marc Raibert pointed out that the company is not interested in making home robots that interact with humans, but instead focuses on industrial robots that can help humans handle difficult tasks.
To this end, Boston Dynamics has specially designed Spot to adapt it to a variety of harsh working environments. For example, Spot’s built-in computer can control legs and balance. It can also use obstacle detection cameras to identify railings and steps, and go up and down stairs autonomously. Front, rear and side cameras ensure Spot’s navigation, autonomous action and all-round movement.
In terms of flexibility, the Spot robot can also meet the needs of most scenarios. Its walking speed is similar to humans, about 3 miles per hour, and it can also jog, run, dance, and turn. In addition, Spot’s hands and body are independent, which means that even when it is walking, it can perform another task on its hands.
Spot is therefore able to give full play to its role of “helping people deal with difficult tasks” in building surveys that require walking, surveying, and time consuming in various environments.
In addition, compared with other fields, building measurement has a higher fault tolerance rate, which is more suitable for Spot that debuts and needs to be improved in practice.
Currently, Spot is mainly for rent and has not started to sell. Raibert also admits that it is still in the early adaptation phase of the market. “This is the first generation product. I will definitely have many problems and many places that need repair.” “Our job is to find their weaknesses and fix them.”
Raibert said that Spot’s rent is currently thousands of dollars per month, and the price is related to the number of robots leased by the company and the length of the lease. The company plans to make 1,000 Spot robot dogs by mid-2020.
To be “Android in Robots”
In addition to the actual use in building surveys, Spot has also participated in testing in other projects, which outlines more future use scenarios for Spot.
For example, it used to beSites have been worked in oil refineries and national power grid distribution plants. These places are important and dangerous, and machines like Spot are needed for data collection and inspection. Even Spot has been involved in police investigations of dangerous objects and bombs. Raibert also said frankly that although cooperation with the police is currently limited, such cooperation opportunities will increase.
Raibert pointed out that Spot is not a fixed-purpose robot. Users can add hardware equipment or design software to interact with it through Spot’s API. Although Boston Dynamics has equipped the Spot with robotic arms, spectrum radios, cameras and lidars, other companies are also developing their own sensors.
For the future, Raibert hopes that Spot will become a platform and be “Android in robots”.
However, in such a platform, the robot dog Spot may not be the only participant. In addition to Spot, other robots betted by Boston Dynamics include Handle and Atlas.
Handle is positioned as a logistics robot that can work in a warehouse. Not only does it step on a pair of “fire wheels”, it can also locate the pallet through a vision system and can identify the boxes it needs among many boxes.
Although Handle is still in the model stage, Raibert said that it will be put into production and commercialized in the next 18 months. “Our plan is to use what we have learned from Spot after a year and a half. Experience and skills to mass produce Handle. “
Compared with Spot and Handle, Atlas is more like a person in terms of appearance and behavior. In the 38-second video of the top of the Boston Dynamics YouTube homepage, Atlas showed a complete and smooth set of gymnastic exercises, including handstands, aerial spins, flat horses, etc., and even at the endRaise your hands.
The latest version of this humanoid robot weighs 165 pounds and is equipped with a hydraulic power unit weighing about 5 kilograms, which can generate 5kw of power when running. In addition, it has a pair of 3D printed legs with hydraulic channels, actuator plates, valve positions, space frames, customized lightweight components, and more.
The cost of hardware and software plus R & D costs is much higher than other robots, and a special team is needed to maintain its normal operation. Instead of commercializing Atlas, Boston Dynamics hopes to apply some of the technologies successfully tested on Atlas to other products when appropriate.
To date, the Boston Dynamics YouTube homepage has topped 8 million Atlas video views. Of the 18 robot videos it has released in the past 5 years, 2.1 million have been the least viewed videos, and more than 35 million have been the highest.
For a long time, Boston Dynamics was ridiculed as a “robot video manufacturing company” because of the delay in launching commercial robots. The introduction of the robot dog Spot to the market is of great significance to Boston Dynamics. However, where this little yellow dog can finally lead Boston Dynamics, only time will tell.
This article is from WeChat public account: Silicon Valley Insight (ID: guigudiyixian) , author : Shumin