Multi-Mission Robotics for Public Safety

Thank you all for joining us. I'm Vatche Arabian. I'm joined by my colleague, Matt. Introduce yourself. Yeah. Matt Montecalvo. Everyone calls me Cupcake, as I'm sure we'll get into, but I've been with Boston Dynamics for three years. I started my career at a robot back in twenty twelve. Yeah. Twenty twelve, twenty eleven roughly, working on EOD platforms that they sold all the way up through about I was there for thirteen years. And then I came over here. So I've been doing this for a while. And the goal of our conversation today is really to talk about Spot and how Spot is being used in public safety and and emergency response and government applications. So before we get, you know, get deep into some of those applications, you know, Spot, really, the way that we talk about it to these these customers is it's a multi mission platform. But let's go deeper. Right? What why do we say that? What are the some of those missions? Yeah. So customers use it for bomb disposal, CBRNE, ISR capabilities. There's a bunch of different payloads you can attach to it. So those are the three main ones that we see today. But there's a variety of other things we can attach to different mission sets. I think the biggest question I tend to get when I'm out is like there's customers that have been you know, there's been robots in use, as you said, you know, for a long time, and you're quite familiar with them. What kind of advantages do legs have over those robots? The Yeah. The tracked and wheeled robots? Yeah. I mean, legs kind of change the dynamic a bit. So with legs, you can go over rugged terrain. That's the primary capability that you get over like a wheeled or tracked platform. So think of like a building, right, a collapse, a disaster, something like that. Like, they can get into that environment very quickly and very efficiently, whereas a wheeled or tracked platform typically gets hung up Yeah. In that type of environment. And they can take the same payload that that track or wheeled platform would take into that environment much more efficiently Yeah. Accomplish that task. Yeah. A a real world story of that example with Spot was in New York when the parking parking lot Yeah. Exactly. Collapsed. And and Spot was able to traverse that terrain that would have been too dangerous for for the fire department to go over, and they were able to to check for, you know, folks that they might have needed to go in for it. Yep. That's a great example of of of the advantages. Another, like, another thing customers say too is, like, a lot of those areas have, you know, dirty clothes, dirty laundry, that sort of thing. And Spot can handle that. Yeah. You don't have to worry about it. Right? With other platforms, you might you can still get by. You might just have to move it. Yeah. But at least it's just something you don't have to even think about with this type of platform. Another thing that I hear from customers when when we're out in the field is, you know, I can put this controller in most people's hands And a skilled or unskilled operator, it might be their first time picking up that that controller. Why is Spot so easy to drive? It's pretty cool. So there's a lot of stuff that we just do under the hood for operators. We're talking about walking through terrain, for example. Right? My past experience, like, when you're trying to climb stairs, let's go to climbing stairs. You have to, you know, get on the stairs, adjust your flippers if you have flippers or whatever else. You have to adjust all the pieces of the robot to maintain balance while you just go up those stairs. We do all that automatically. You don't have to think about it. You don't have to think about it. Yeah. So like it we do a lot of that type of stuff whether it's using the manipulator to pick up an object autonomously, either semi autonomously, manually, or fully autonomously. Like you have that plethora of options for the operator to kind of pick what they like Yeah. Versus traditionally it's fully manual and you own every little bit of the movement. And the object avoidance too. You can Yeah. You can drive it out out of line of sight and and it'll step over things that are Yeah. Twelve inches or lower and then you see walls. Just a lot less that you have to think about as an operator. It's like point and go Yeah. Essentially versus paying attention to the situation and trying to operate the robot. You're just trying to get to where you need to be Yeah. And not paying attention about how to get there. Yeah. You hear about like that lighten load, like, lighten the operator fatigue. The cognitive load. Cognitive load. Yeah. Yeah. Can you speak about that a little bit? Yeah. I mean, that's kind of what I was trying to get at just then. It's like you're thinking about how to operate the robot to achieve the task versus just trying to, like, focus on achieving the task. Yeah. So everything we do, I think that's a better way to look at it, is everything we've done is essentially a way to reduce cognitive load on the operator. So they're just focusing on, I need to pick that up. I'm gonna move the gripper towards that and like not I have to move this joint, then this joint, then that Right. Twist. Like, they're just saying So many steps. Yeah. They're just saying grab it, essentially. Yeah. And it's just a lot less something to worry about and they can do things much quick much more quickly and they can pay attention to other things in the environment too that are Yeah. And training. Right? Like, I think people can get up to speed a lot faster. Yeah. The training curve is way faster. Something I think I would say, I believe we'd take about a day or two to train someone to be proficient, like very proficient, where in a past life that was like three to four, sometimes five days depending on the platform. Yeah. And you've touched on just the manipulation part. Moving the arm is a lot easier. Can you speak a little bit more about, like, what is it like to use Spot Arm? I would say I used to call it flying the end effector at my last job, where basically you're just kind of guiding the manipulator. So you're you're saying like, go forward and the arm moves the way it's supposed to move to basically take that hand gripper end effector, whatever you'd like to call it, and move it forward in space Versus you trying to think about all the joints you have to move manually to achieve that same motion. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Let's dive deeper into some of those those big big applications or big use cases. Can you speak about ISR? Like, what are some of the examples where departments or people are using it for for ISR? Yeah. ISR so law enforcement, for example. Think of like a traditional barricaded suspect type scenario or even just before they enter a building. Yeah. If they're trying to watch and just pay attention to what's going on so they can make informed decisions before putting someone in harm's way or in front of a potentially hazardous situation. Yeah. That's the whole point. So we have that camera system on the back. That's basically, you know, getting the robots in very easy with this platform. So it's get it in and then just watch what you need to watch so you can make an informed decision and not put someone in harm's way to do that same thing effectively. Yeah. There's some really good use cases of that in, you know, kind of the last four or five years since Spot's been deployed. You know, dangerous situations where the robot was able to kind of be in the middle of that danger And then provide back to the responding officers or and honestly, give officers more time to make better informed decision. Right? Yeah. I mean, that's all it is. It's time and distance from the situation, right, that that provides better outcomes. Yeah. I think of the the Mass State Police, story as probably the most famous one because of that. Roscoe lives in our in our museum, but Mass State Police had responded to a situation, where, you know, someone was was firing a weapon at officers wildly at the neighborhood. They were able to use the robot to gain access, find them in that building. You know, there was unfortunately, Spot Spot took a few bullets that day. Yeah. But that, you know, those were bullets that could have gone and and hurt someone or killed someone, you know. And and the robot was able to give the officers that information. They knew he was using lethal force. They knew this was a situation that they needed to respond to carefully. And it bought them more time to respond and and and that that suspect was arrested and no one was harmed that day. Yeah. Yeah. Other than the robot, I guess. Right. Yeah. But but at the end of the day, like, a robot gets damaged or blown up or whatever, that's the ideal outcome. Right? Because that wasn't a person. Right. So that's the whole goal. Yeah. If a robot comes back blown up, I like him actually happy. Yeah. I'm not upset that, I have to fix it or whatever. It's like it's a good day. Yeah. Yeah. And I do I do like like, we we have that that that robot is prominent in our in our museum if if customers ever get ever visit us. And and it's a great story. And and it's a story that we love telling all customers, not just not just public safety customers. Yeah. Because it just shows the ways that people are using Spot. Because Spot is being used in dangerous situations across applications, across industries. You know, speaking of lifesaving and just an amazing application, you've been really involved with that project. Can you speak a little bit about EOD? We work with our partner ELP to develop some different payloads for the robot, one of them being a a disruptor, mount, so to speak. For bomb disposal, EOD I think that's a space where we've felt a lot of excitement from our customers. You know, they looked at SPA as a platform and really out of the box, ISR was the biggest application and and manipulation, you know. Yep. Naturally, that had, applications down down to other other groups and other other customers, and that's where EOD application came out. Can you speak a little bit about, how that that evolution? Yeah. So, I mean, we were getting requirements out of customers. Right? And, like, it's kind of the next natural evolution too of the platform in in that market. So, like, generally, like, we'll say, like, a law enforcement bomb squad. They generally are the ones who have the robots, and they use it for ISR and then for bomb disposal. So when we had the ISR capability, they naturally started asking for bomb disposal capability. Right? And that one of those things is like a disruptor, which is used to disrupt the bomb for lack of a better word, it doesn't detonate. So we started working with one of our partners, ELP, who is also familiar and been around in this space for a long time. And we developed a disruptor mount so you can basically take Spot as a platform, reconfigure it, take the ISO payload off after you've done everything you need to do, put this payload on, and then you can go deal with the device, so to speak. You use the manipulator to position it if you need to interrogate it, whatever you need to do, and then the disruptor to ideally disable it. It's like the natural evolution. Right? So we had an ISR capability like you mentioned like right out of the gate. And normally with law enforcement, the guys that have the robots are bomb techs. Yeah. So they get called for everything if they need a robot, whether it's just eyes on and they're sitting around watching stuff or there's a potential device they need to go deal with it, whatever it is. So we started getting requirements out of them, them asking for more stuff that aligns with that use case. Then we started building building towards that. Right? So we had a partner in Germany, ELP, who is very familiar with the space. They've done this type of stuff before. I've worked with them a lot in the past too. Fortunately, we were already working with them when I came here, which was nice. So I had a good relationship. But we started developing a disruptor payload, which is a common tool for this market to disable, disrupt for for lack of a better word, the the device. And then so they take Spot as a platform. They'll take the ISR payload off. They'll attach this payload, and then they'll go deal with that device. Yeah. And then we're seeing that start to grow too. So recently, we've got a lot of customers that are buying robots more and more for this application. We have one large deal, fortunately, that have panned out in the last six six months or so, I believe. Yeah. Yeah. With the Dutch. Yep. Yeah. The other big use case to that I wanna kinda touch on too is Seaburn. We've got a a great partner, Radico. Yeah. You know, Radico's built a a kit that can hold a lot of sensors, a lot of sensors that a lot of our customers already own. Yeah. And what the robot's doing there is, you know, they're bringing it to, you know, big events like the Indy five hundred or the Super Bowl or Boston Marathon. You're seeing some of these new stories pop up. But similar to walking a dog around, right, they're they're the robot is moving around these large crowded areas sniffing and sniffing for threats. So that CBRN threat detection is another space that I think we're seeing a lot of lot of interest in in Spot. Yeah. And like kind of like EOD, it's it's another evolution of it. Right? All all of these capabilities are intertwined in a way. And it's just it depends on the environment that they're trying to go deal with. And one of them is often Seaburn. You have to find potentially some chemical or I'll call it a signal, right, that says I should go look at this thing further and for like events with lots of people. Yeah. They want to catch those things early. Right. And then maybe it's just something off gassing, maybe it's not, but it's good to at least identify it and investigate it rather than just not knowing it and something happening. Yeah. So in your time here in three years, you've seen a lot of these these expansions. Yeah. Like, what's what's coming next? Like, what's the next what's the next thing? What are you working on right now? What am working on? What what can you tell us? We're continuing that evolution. Right? So we're continuing to look and see what else customers want. If it's in the same vein of bomb disposal, Seaburn, ISR, like if it's furthering those to get more deeper ingrained with the different customer requirements we're getting or if it's potentially another adjacent payload or capability that we should explore. So like another one, for example, if you want to keep going and looking down like the EOD use cases like an X-ray. Yeah. That's another common tool. That right now someone has to put it on a bomb suit and walk out and place it next to what they think is a bomb and find out if it's a device that they can then take a robot and investigate. Yeah. Ideally, that person doesn't do that. Yeah. Right? So like there's ways to do it now. They're not super integrated into, like, any platform, I would say. So, like, there's like, that thread we could go down. There we're exploring all these different things on top of just advancing the product as it stands today to be better at what it does. Yeah. Amazing. I think we're gonna take a really quick break. And there's a bunch of questions that were pre submitted, and there's some questions coming alive. And if you've got questions, please use the q and a button. We've got moderator standing by to answer those. And we'll take a couple of those and, yeah, we'll be back in one minute. Sounds good. Yeah. I just arrived on scene. Center perimeter right now. Air support's overhead. Ocean thirty five, that'll Spot seventeen out in position. Bingo, eyes on subject. One male with a long arm. East side, level three. Roger that. Alpha two four is moving into position now. Right. And we're back. Thank you all for sticking around. We're gonna try to get to as many of your questions as we can. But please use that q and a button, and our moderators will will answer. And we're gonna take a couple. So someone actually called out, like, we say we have this term mission ready in minutes. What does that mean? Is that can Spot actually be ready in minutes? Yeah. Yeah. It it's like the boot time. Right? I mean, so one of the big things actually going way back to when I first started in, like, what did I say, twenty ten, twenty eleven, twelve roughly when I started my career. The whole the whole thing was how fast can you boot up and start using the robot. And that like that time is critical because they either need to plan to be booting the robot in route. That's their way. Yeah. Or they know they have adequate time to get their boot and get set up and then go. So we have about it's like two, three minutes from, you know, pressing the button to the robot's on and then able to be connected to our tablet. So that's what we mean by mission ready in minutes is like, you've only got a couple minutes from pressing that button to actively using it in a scenario. And and the robot's lighter than people think. I think people think the robot Yeah. Like, when I tell them what it weighs, it's a hundred pounds with with our standard payload kit, maybe a little bit more than that. But Yeah. Yeah. It's not it's it's a two person lift. I've seen you lift it by yourself, but you're you're cupcake and you're you're superhuman. Yeah. Most people think I'm stronger than I am just because of that. But yeah. Yeah. Don't. It's a two person lift. Yeah. Don't do that. Ocean requirement. Don't throw your back on on because cupcake can do it. Yeah. So what's battery life like? Like, how long does it take to to switch batteries and and reboot like that that turnaround? For runtime, it's like ninety minutes on average. Right? It it that largely depends on your payload. So our average, like, all the payloads we've talked about till now are ninety minutes. If you put something on there that is like a one off custom thing that draws a lot of power, it's probably gonna impact that life. But good average is ninety minutes. Hots we can actually hot swap. Right? So you bring the robot back. We have a short power cable that goes in the back of the robots. You sit it down, roll it over, plug it in. You can actually pull the dead battery out, put the new battery in, pull the cable, and then You're have to turn it off. You're not turning it off. Yeah. And then that battery, recharges in only sixty minutes. So your battery your next battery is full a good half an hour before your next your current battery, depletes. Yeah. Robot teaming, like, that's a that's a topic that that comes up. Yeah. You know, are are you are is our robot working with other robots? Is our robot working with drones? Have you seen integrations with drones? Can we can you speak to that a little bit? Yeah. Absolutely. So, I mean, it's a it's a thing. It's a very common thing now, especially as you see like in the Department of Defense, right, there there's this whole system of systems concept where they want multiple different robots and drones and different platforms working together in unison. So, the short answer is yes. And basically, what we see, like, for local law enforcement, the robot is sometimes just a means to transport other smaller platforms inside. Like the small, you know, smaller little rolling robots. Yeah. Or little drones too. Right? Stuff that, like, can't get through a door necessarily or, like, they'd have to bust a window to get in. They'll actually use the robot to just open the door autonomously, walk in, and then let these little marsupials pop off. Yeah. And so they throw them on the robot. They get inside. They can search the house, like, completely very quickly before they have anyone can even get near the house. Yeah. That's like law enforcement. You know, if you're looking at like a military DOD type customer, they're doing that similar thing and just a larger scale, essentially. Sometimes they have more common controllers or they're controlling everything through the same interface. Law enforcement, not so much. They use the independent controllers, but that's that's really the big difference. Yeah. What's what's the reach of the robot with SpotArm? We talked about SpotArm, we didn't really talk about that. It's about one meter. So and that's from the turrets. That's, yeah, in front of it up. You can also angle, the I call it the wrist. I forget if it's actually called the wrist. But so you can go one meter up like this, like that. Yeah. And we kinda we breezed over the arm. So just to go back to that a little bit too, like the arm has a four k camera on it. It has a tactical light on it as well, really bright light. Yep. There was another question about, you know, are like, obviously, it's it's a it's a it's a claw. Like, it's not there's not really fine fine motor skills, but could you open a bag or backpack with with the arm? Proficient operators can. It's not a traditional gripper style like the parallel gripper bar or parallel bar grippers that you'll see in a lot of different robots. It it is very you can get a lot of fine, like zippers, phones, and stuff off the ground. You just have to use it and get experience with doing that. Yeah. That's not something like an autonomous function would do. It's like a good manual operator can get that. Yeah. Because like going back to us talking about like how quickly you can get up to speed and how easy it is to use. Like, it's easy to drive around and do these basic functions. Yeah. But just like anything, when you're when you're getting into that sort of expert level skills, like, that's where that's where practice makes perfect. Yeah. Exactly. And people make tools for it, though, too. So one of our actually, ELP that I talked about earlier, they made little tweezers for the gripper. So you can I actually was using it to unzip a suitcase and, like, take stuff out of a suitcase at a trade show one time? Yeah. So, like, the gripper by itself is a little bit challenging and, like, you need to be an experienced operator to to get some of those things open so you can do it. But there are tools that we've got people that have developed on their own or partners have developed that can make those Like a car door opening. Yeah. Like like a block you can Yeah. Yeah. Hook line kits. There's all sorts of stuff Yeah. That you can augment the capability as it exists today. Yeah. You know, we didn't talk about comms. And I think You know, our standard kit that is includes a PS radio. But what if what if they already have radios? How does how do comms work if they're not using that kit? Yeah. So I mean, so the platform's radio agnostic. So you can attach any Ethernet based radio to the platform. We have a breakout that takes our payload port to basically an Ethernet interface that you can attach your comm solution to. Or like you said, we've got an m p five from Persistent Systems that we just sell as a kit already. Are there any challenges with Spot when dealing in high temperatures or or or like a smoky situation? Let's say there's been a smoke charge or something. You know? Does the robot have any issues seeing through occlusions like that? People often think it does. But again, it kinda goes back to the we make it so you can take it out of the box and use it and avoid obstacles and everything. Smoke is a particle, so the cameras actually see that as an obstacle. So you need to turn that function off. Yeah. So in foggy, smoky, brush, like thick, like something where there's stuff in the air or or things need a close environment to the robot, like, it can navigate in those areas. You just need to know to go turn that setting off. It goes down to operator training. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. I guess speaking of of of of contaminants, are there decontaminating procedures for the robot? I think that's a question that I've seen come through. There are. It's it's IP fifty four, so it's not traditional, like, throw it in a bath and start scrubbing it and soaking it with water. You can wash it off, but you can't submerge it, essentially. So any kind of typical, like, walk into a tub and scrub it down should be okay as long as you're not dosing it with a hose for a long time Yeah. Essentially. Right? So for I p fifty four too, like, how can it walk through water? Or Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. I guess that's actually one differentiator between when you think about a quadruped versus a tracked vehicle. Tracked vehicles sit low to the ground. So it makes sense for them to all be IP sixty seven or higher because any amount of water is going over all their critical systems. Yeah. A quadruped sits significantly above the ground. So you can think about, like, if my arm was the leg, for example, you can get the water up to the knee or higher, and you would be completely fine still. Yeah. To close this out too, it's been a great conversation and the questions have been amazing. A question we get quite often too, as as people really want to think about procuring spot is are there grants available? And we do work with a partner called GovFunds. There's some great resources on our website that relate to finding, grants for procuring Spot. And if folks are ready to for that conversation, we invite you to head to the website and and fill out the sales form, and we'd be more than happy to have that conversation with you. Thank you so much, Cupcake. This has been really informative. And, I want to just thank you for your time. And thank you all at home for for watching, and we'll see you next time.