Robot dogs :
A domestic dog is expected to run, jump and, above all, to help and appreciate the humans with whom it lives. The usual thing is that, as it happens with CyberDog , it has three USB-C sockets and another HDMI, and multiple sensors, including an Intel RealSense D450 camera, to avoid obstacles in its path. This device, launched by Xiaomi, was presented at the latest edition of the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona and is added to the long list of "digital pets" that populate a market that is increasingly difficult to understand.
Aesthetically, this invention, whose brain is powered by the artificial intelligence of Nvidia 's Jetson Xavier NX supercomputer and which can be guided by voice, a remote control or a smartphone, is not very different from the most famous robot dog: Spot , of Boston Dynamics, a company that is currently in Hyundai's portfolio after being acquired by the giant Google and the Japanese group Softbank. In fact, Spot, a resident of the IBM stand during the MWC, was in the Catalan capital very close to CyberDog. There is no record of them fighting or becoming friends.
In any case, Spot was not designed to keep company or play with people, like a Labrador retriever or a chihuahua. Its promoters referred from the beginning to the exploration of radioactive areas, construction sites or manufacturing plants. However, its popularity came from the hand of the Massachusetts police, especially in the detection of bombs and other explosives. In addition, at the height of the pandemic, in May 2020, the Singapore Government used these plastic and metal animals to ensure social distance between citizens in parks.
How did they get it? Well, by resorting to one of the best-known characteristics of real dogs: barking at those who ignore the rules. More recently, these machines have been used in Honolulu, the capital of Hawaii, to take the temperature of homeless people. Examples like these have led the New York Police Department to develop its own robot. Not in vain, on the border between the United States and Mexico, another of these gadgets, called Vision 60 and manufactured by Ghost Robotics, makes sure that anyone who is not authorized can cross the border.
Even the specialized publication Military Times echoed the success of this technology at the US Army conference held at the end of 2021. Aibo, created by Sony at the end of the 20th century, was a revolutionary product that, surely because it was born prematurely , did not spread outside its country of origin, Japan. However, it did achieve a notable impact as an icon of the industrial revolution —the fourth— that was brewing.
When the Asian multinational disconnected it because it was not considered profitable, a symbolic funeral was held in a rural Buddhist temple in Japan with 13 units of the mechanical dog. Ten years later, in 2017, Sony put it back into circulation and Aibo even walked through Milan Design Week in Italy. Its appearance has always been less aggressive than the appearance of its more recent congeners, such as Unitree Robotics' A1 , a model that costs around 3,000 euros and is not too different from Spot or CyberDog.
0 Comments