Render Safe and Reduce Risk with Spot

[MUSIC PLAYING] - Thank you for joining today's webinar-- Render Safe and Reduce Risk with Spot. My name is Vatche Arabian, application expert for Boston Dynamics. We've got some amazing stuff to talk about today. But before we get started, I just want to run through some quick housekeeping. We'll be sending out a recording of today's presentation following the webinar. If you have any questions during the webinar, please use the Q&A button below. You can ask questions at any time. There's going to be a quick pause in the middle for some questions. And then we'll get to as many as we can towards the end of the presentation. To kick things off, let's do some intros. Matt, you want to start us off? - Sure. Thanks, Vatche. I started my career at iRobot in 2010, testing their SUGV/UGVs, where I then later transitioned to the field service team. I was with the company for about 13 years when they transitioned from iRobot to Endeavor Robotics and then most recently to FLIR. I was extremely involved with the MTR's Increment 2 program and [INAUDIBLE] throughout my time there. And then I most recently have been with Boston Dynamics for two years. And I took on the position not too long ago as the government product manager, where I'm focusing on turning Spot into a real solution for our end users. - All right. Thanks, Matt, Vatche. Hello, everyone. Excited to be here talking about one of Spot's most important applications yet, EOD. First, a little background on me. I retired from the Navy in 2011 as a special operator, serving my last two years in the acquisition office at Naval Special Warfare Group 2. I then transitioned to the civilian sector, working at FLIR for 10 years, focusing on the Navy and SoCon business. Now I'm the government sales manager here at BD, focusing on UGV solutions for all DOD and international public safety end users. - Awesome. - So as I said, I started here at Boston Dynamics nearly four years ago with a focus of introducing Spot to the government public safety world. The idea was to use a robot to keep the operators out of harm's way. Back then, there were a lot of questions on how Spot would be perceived by the community in the public safety space. It does slightly resemble a dog. What we have learned over the years is this dog saves lives. This is Mass State Police Robot Roscoe. Roscoe was shot three times in the line of duty during a barricaded suspect operation, where the robot was used to clear the house and provide a crucial information for the officers to make an arrest without any injuries or loss of life. This is just one example of how Spot has been used to reduce risk and safely de-escalate the situation in the last several years. All right, hang tight. We are going to talk about the latest EOD integration, but we want to provide a quick overview of the robot and other integrations we have developed recently. One feature that makes Spot different is the ease of operation. We often say you don't have to be a robotist to operate the robot. The joke around BED is even a Navy guy can do it. It can be used remotely and has autonomous behaviors that make beyond visible on-the-site operations much easier. The operator can see 360 degrees through the on-board stereo cameras. Use the obstacle avoidance to safely navigate inside a building, cluttered areas, or even small spaces. As most of you have probably seen, it easily climbs stairs. And if it does fall, it self-rights at the operator's command. We typically use a military grade radio for connectivity, like the persistent system MPU5 you see located behind the arm. This will increase the range of the robot, allowing more separation and safety to the end user. It runs on a lithium ion battery for 90 minutes. Charges in 60 minutes, so the robot can operate all day with proper battery management with two batteries. It is IP54 and capable of carrying 30 pounds of sensors or tools on its back. - In this video, you can see how it detects the obstacle and navigates around it, as well as maintaining its stability. The autonomous door opening-- the autonomous door opening and self-righting features add to the ease of operation during a mission, reducing stress and time on target. The self-righting action keeps Spot on the mission even if it takes a spill. The operator only needs to tell it to get up one time, and the robot will do the rest. Nice. - As seen here, this ground clutter is a common scene for a lot of operators using robots to search an area. Having legs make the task of clearing this space a lot easier as debris won't get stuck in the wheels or tracks. You can see the robot navigating the room using this obstacle avoidance without running into walls or furniture, making it simple for the operator. The same can be said for climbing stairs. You just point it in the general direction, and the robot does the work. This takes a skilled operator to do with other robots. - Because of its easy-to-use autonomous features, tasks such as opening doors and picking up objects are easy for operators to navigate with just a simple couple of clicks of a button. This would require skilled operators for most UGVs. But with Spot, it's extremely simple. So Spot can autonomously handle most doorknobs or levers. It doesn't matter if it's a push bar, lever, knob, or self-closing door. Spot can manage all of these in real time. Utilizing one of the six onboard cameras, the operator has great situational awareness without being at risk. If you ever visit our office, you'll see robots walking around the facility 24/7. A lot of the robots are used as test platforms and perform the same tasks daily. This is important for us to-- for us and to the end users as the more data we collect, the more reliable and dependable Spot becomes. - All right. The focus of the webinar is to discuss EOD integration. I know we're going to get there, but first let's talk about other ways Spot can help the operator. We have three examples here. Utilizing the rear cam, it has 360-degree cameras, 30 time continuous zoom camera, an IR camera, a series of bright LEDs if necessary, and two-way communications. Extremely helpful for situational awareness. The use of a LiDAR payload, like this black arc from Leica, makes 3D mapping effortless and provides operations and understanding of any potential threats before they enter the situation. We have a great partner in RADICO, who has relationships with top nuclear and chemical sensor companies in the world. They've taken more than 20 sensors and integrated them onto Spot with a quick disconnect bracket, allowing the operator to quickly characterize the environment before you ever put a human at risk. - Other areas our government customers utilize Spot is in nuclear decommissioning, radiation mapping, perimeter security. And like we're all here to see, EOD. - All right. Well, before we move on to EOD, I just wanted to take a quick break and see if there's any questions. There was a question on do you offer sample policies for law enforcement agencies? Or does Boston Dynamics offer policy writing assistance? Shaun, do you want to take that one? - Yeah, Vatche, that's a good question. We do have a government relations team that can reach out and assist with any policy concerns that better prepare you to introduce Spot in your community. And we've used that a number of times with other police departments. - And then on the grant writing side too, we've got Resources is a great webinar about our relationship with a third party that can help with that side of it too. There was a question on video aspect. Can you cast the feed to another monitor so 10 people aren't looking over your shoulder onto the tablet? I don't know who wants to take that one. - Sure, I can take that. Shaun, feel free to jump in. Yeah, you can. With our controller, you can stream out from USB-C to HDMI and go either to another laptop or another just-- sorry, another screen or device. Or you can also get a little creative and put that into an HDMI encoder and then pipe that over a radio to another device on the network too. - Cool. And then a question about how much load can Spot pull. They are thinking about extracting a person, which is not possible. But one of you guys want to take that? - I can take it. If you're talking about pulling, it drags up to 55 pounds. So not really pulling a wounded individual, but it can drag up to 55 pounds. - Cool. How about GPS-denied environment capabilities? - That would mostly-- so we use the MP5 radio. So it's essentially just the capabilities of that radio that we leverage. I would need to look exactly at their spec sheet and whatnot to say how they operate in that environment, but that is exactly what we use. Shaun, I don't know if you have any more detail. - No, that's why we use the radios. - Cool. And yeah. Thank you all for using the Q&A button. We're definitely not going to get to all of these at this part. We will save some of these for the end. But I'm going to do two more. We talked about water resistance. So Spot's IP54 rated. But the question is about what's its heat tolerance, what can it withstand. So Spot, I think the top is 55 degrees C. - 55 C. - Minus 20 for the low end. And then I'm picking on this question to segue into the rest of the content. "Can we activate the EOD disrupter from Spot controller? How does it work?" Great question. Let's get to EOD. And keep putting those questions in the Q&A. We will get to more in a little bit. - So Spot is first to respond in most scenes for Houston PD. They use technology to put time and distance between themselves and the situation. It helps reduce risk and resolve conflicts safely by putting time and distance between the operators and the threat. - On this slide, you see the versatility of this robot. It increases the amount of jobs the operator can perform with very simple adjustments to the payloads in very little time. Whether you need to investigate a suspicious package or remove a possible threat to a safer location, it can be set up to accommodate a variety of jobs that are usually performed by people. - So we worked with ELP, who's a great partner. I have personally worked with them for many, many years, all the way back to iRobot with my time there. But they helped us develop our disrupter capability. Customers can utilize the various cameras to view the package or device, the manipulator to move that to a device to a safer location, and then the front or rear-mounted disrupter integrations to render that object safe. So pictured here is the gripper and rear-mounted disrupter solutions. The most commonly used solution will be the rear mount, but the gripper-mounted solution provides operators the ability to reach into tight and hard-to-reach spaces. Both solutions utilize the same integrated firing circuit, a range finder which is displayed in our tablets UI, along with a laser aiming system that can turn on at the operator's desired range. And this also utilizes the same MPU5 as our standard kit. - Yeah, here we're firing a variety of-- oh, sorry. For these shots, Spot is firing a carbon fiber disrupter in both the gripper and the rear of the robot. This functionality gives the operator the option to use the gripper for manipulation and still have a render safe device located on the robot. With a 6 degrees of freedom in the arm, the operator only controls the end effector. It makes hard to replace it easier for the operator to hit with confidence. - Just let it play out. - RIP [INAUDIBLE]. - [LAUGHS] That was your last shot of the day, I believe. - Of the week. - Of the week. [LAUGHS] And this shot, we like, just because of the position of the feet. - And this one too. It was just barely hanging on to the rocks, and it still had visibility. - Amazing. - All right, here we're firing a variety of Chemring disrupters from a variety of positions, trying to challenge the robot a little bit. Again, hitting hard-to-reach targets at challenging angles. Notice the user's operating the arm to use the 4K camera and the gripper for precise aiming. This is important when using the robot beyond visible on a site. And as you can see, we just tried to-- the operators were giving us scenarios. And we were just trying to hit hard-to-reach targets. And angles were a little different, a little challenging. - So we're just now talking about the EOD solution, but we've been working on this for years. We wanted to make sure that we put the best solution forward for the end user and ensure that they have a reliable and dependable tool in their tool belt. We test a failure to also understand what could happen when things go wrong. So as you can see in the bottom left video, the disrupter didn't release and resulted in the robot taking a few steps but not losing its balance or falling over. Currently, we have tested and integrated the CarbonFire CF10, the Chemring RE70 and RE12G, the Pigstick, M5 Hornet, and the Hotrod. And we're currently testing the PAN and Titan disrupters at this time. We can add others as we see demand or get asked about them. So Boston Dynamics has been around for a long time. But as you can see, Spot was not commercially available until 2019, right before the pandemic, which made it hard for us to interact with our customers directly for a period of time. And in that time, we saw a wide adoption of Spot in many different markets and mountains and mountains of feedback. I want everyone to know that we're here and we're listening to all that feedback. And this timeline shows the progression from Spot's commercial availability to integrating CBRNE sensors, radio payloads, our signal's API, which allows data from sensors to be piped right into the controller's UI, and even orbit, which started as a tool for our industrial customers. And we later have seen a lot of adoption in the perimeter security application. Most recently, we just talked about the disrupter integration. That's the most recent thing we've been working on. And we just went through all the stuff there. Coming soon, we'll have some new features, such as user profiles that will allow the operator or the user to clean up the UI or streamline it to their liking. We'll have threshold warnings. So in that signal's API, you can actually set warnings and cautions, which will change the color of the text to alert you to an elevated level of whatever it is you're trying to detect; as well as the Spot station, which is primarily for the perimeter security application. It's a shelter for the robot to be stored in and then to deploy from for any kind of application in a secure area. And I just want to say like, we have a very dedicated team here at Boston Dynamics. Our sole focus is to basically make Spot the best tool for all of you and to make sure everyone can come home safely at the end of the day. That's why we all come in to work. That's why I'm here. [CHUCKLES] - Oh, well, thank you, Matt and Shaun. So with that, please use the Q&A button. And we're going to have-- we're going to take some questions. Of course, I should have picked one before I said that. "Are you able to fire and retain the Hotrod or Pigstick came in?" I think when we were looking at that GIF. - Yeah, I can take this. And Cupcake can-- oh, see, I did it. Matt, you can-- - Oh, now we got to explain Cupcake. I don't know. [LAUGHTER] - If any of you have worked with me from my time at iRobot, you-- it's been a thing. [LAUGHTER] - And now all these people know the thing. [LAUGHTER] All right, Shaun. - All right, Matt. Yeah, we actually fired a shot. I forget which exact disrupter we're using. It didn't fly away. We have it on a slide-- on one of the slides. It was a picture, a video of it. And it didn't fly away, but it still responded with just walking a couple steps forward with no issues. - And so any question that we can't answer in great detail, we will follow up with you after too. So any question we don't answer-- we read all the questions. We follow up through email. So don't worry about that. So this question, "What safety arrangements do you have for firing the disrupter? Is this formally assured to a SIL level? Is it fired over the MPU5?" was the question. - So with the integrated firing circuit, you can use one that has a separate radio and whatnot. But if you were to go, let's say, the integrated route, that goes through the MPU5 currently. So it does not interact with our controller directly, but it goes through the same radio and through the same network and then gets to the receiver on the other end to initiate the disrupter. - "Can you adjust the speed of the arm and claw in case of interruption signal or battery drainage? Can the robot freeze in place instead of moving?" - So yes, you can adjust the speed of the manipulator, just like you can with the walking speed, both in the slider and with how much input you give it on the joysticks. It depends on how smooth you want to be. If you have it in high speed and you're very jerky with the joysticks, the arm is jerky, you can slow it down and be more precise and finesse, different types of things you're trying to manipulate. And then as far as can the robot freeze in place when it's moving and falling-- so when the battery drains, the robot will sit down. That's to prevent it from just collapsing and causing damage to its environment more than itself. When it loses communication, currently, the arm will stow. And that's all it does. It will freeze in place, but the arm will retract to prevent basically the arm from hitting anything. - Now, [INAUDIBLE] it's OK. We can reiterate some of the content. But when can we see the ability to use the PAN or Titan? - Yeah, I mean, it's coming soon. The ability would-- we'll see. What we can say, possibly Q2. So it is coming soon. We're starting to test it very soon. And I think Jeremy just had a comment that he's testing as well. So yep. - "Can the disrupter integration system be customized to the current disrupter platform being utilized by a police service?" - Yes. So essentially, the kit is actually everything-- everything is the same minus the adapter sleeve for the disrupter. So that piece of the gripper is holding. And that get mounts to the rear-- gets mounted to the rear. Just has an adapter sleeve. So that gets basically customized for the disrupter you want to use. So all the ones we've integrated are essentially ones that we have sleeves for and we have tested. The ones that we're currently testing, we have sleeves. And we're fine-tuning that to make sure that they work as we desire, basically. - Cool. Can we talk comms a little bit? There's been some questions about comms distance. Can you talk a little bit more about how comms work with the robot? - Sure, yeah. So specifically for this application, like we said previously, we use the MP5 radio. That can be used with mesh nodes and other platforms on the same network to extend the range. So the range is really limited by-- I mean, there's a lot of factors, such as the environment and whatnot, that can contribute to the range. But point to point, you can probably expect, I usually say roughly 600 meters running at like 1 watt, not any higher than that, our standard manufacturing configuration-- sorry, standard configuration we push out. That, obviously, can be changed as well as you can add repeaters or, like I said, other robots with the same radio to really extend that into where you're trying to go, whether it's a cave, a building. It's super dependent. So unfortunately, there's no straight answer. But basically, the capabilities of that radio and how far you can push that is how far we can push Spot is the short answer. - If anybody talks comms, they know it's hard to give a specific answer on it. But I know we've linked up to 15 radios together in the tunnels before with zero latency and no issues, so. - So sticking with comms for a second because we had a presubmitted question about, how do you overcome potential challenges due to poor quality of service? And then someone just asked, live, how does it run in a jammed environment, considering EOD team's own signal jammer. Can we speak to that? - Yeah, that is truly dependent on the radio payload. So for the MP5, I know they have capabilities to work in those environments specifically. I can't speak to every single radio. And it's going to matter exactly what radio you put on the robot. But Shaun, do you have any specifics on that by chance? I don't know off the top of my head. - I don't. That's advanced communication-level question, but I know you can run cable as well if you need to. - Yeah, true. - Cool. "Does the disrupter kit include the mount for the arm and the rear application? Or are they separate?" - So we can talk a little about-- so there's going to be a couple different kits, I would say, one being a public safety kit. We're going to call it a public safety kit. That primarily uses the carbon fiber tin. And then one-- and then that's primarily a gripper mount that can be used in both places, as the videos showed previously. And then the other one would be a larger government style kit that needed tighter thresholds, better aiming, things like that. And again, gripper mount easily transitions to the rear mount as well, all utilizing the same equipment, which makes it easier for the operator. - And there's a question-- there's a couple questions that I'm going to combine. So question about, is it easy to interchange with other types of payloads? Can I change it from an ISR kind of configuration and put the disrupter payload on there? And then another question of, can end users mount and unmount these payloads? Or does that have to be done by BD? Do you guys want to talk about that? - Do you want to-- - Yeah, I'll say. Yes, it's mounts the same way as all of our other payloads. And there's nothing that the operator-- we do not need to be involved in that mounting and swapping of those payloads. It's just as if you were taking our Spot cam on and off. There's, obviously, more screws and wires and whatnot for the disrupter kit, but nothing the operator can't do. - And like we said earlier, RADICO came up with a quick disconnect bracket that makes it really easy to put their CBRNE kit on or off and then put the CAM IR on in the rear. And we're continuously working on making the payloads a little bit easier so we can change to the operator's needs. - Speaking of RADICO, what CBRNE sensors have they integrated somewhat, actually? - Oh, boy. - It's a very-- - Again, we can take specifics offline. - We can do-- we can send a list. It's a long list. So they do a lot of testing and basically listen to the end users and answers their questions-- or answers their requirements. So there's a long list. We can take that offline. - Yeah, I'd say it's around 50 sensors right now. - Yeah, a lot of sensors. - Let me find another question. Oh, this was a good one. "How do Spot communicate to the human if there's an issue or malfunction?" How does that work? - Sure. So on our UI-- I forget if it's anywhere in the slideshow, but there's four icons in the top right part of the banner on the tablet. And there is a health status. And that will flash if you click that. It's basically yellow or red, depending on the severity of the problem. And then that'll give you the description of what's happening, essentially. So it's visual. And it's flashing in your face. There's no audio or haptic feedback for that right now. - Someone asked, "Which disrupter can I use for the arm while keeping Spot cam on the rear?" - So there's a couple. You can use the CarbonFire 10. The Chemring RE12 I think it is, Matt. So there's several of them. It's really just weight restricted. Less than 10, 12 pounds, something like that. - Gotcha. Oh, Jeremy says Titan will be capable for gripper as well. Night vision or limited visibility capabilities. Cupcake, you want to demystify that a little bit? - I guess I'm-- are we talking the robot's ability to see or-- - Yeah, I think there were a couple questions on thermal, basically, like, how do we-- what solutions do we have right now for helping in that, like a limited visibility scenario? - Gotcha. So we have the-- for the operator to see in dark environments, we have our thermal camera attached to our Spot cam. I believe it's black hot, white hot, and not rainbow. I'm blanking on the name of it, but-- - TAC. - Or palette as well. That's primarily what we can use at night. We do have a block camera that you can push out white light or IR light and adjust those settings to try and get better visibility at night. But that's currently the two options we have right now. Shaun, did I miss anything? - No. - This might be a tough one. What about streaming video streams to a VMS? Is that something we're looking at or doing, Matt? - We are looking at in the future trying to get Spot to push out video, to be able to be pulled into applications, such as like TAC or like drone sensor or any of those other C2 suites. Stuff like that, we're looking at. We're tracking it. We're working towards it. That's one thing that we're trying to get done. It's in progress. - Cool. Someone asked about telemetry for CBRNE sensors. And we moved through that real fast. So do you want to talk about that? The signal's API. - Yeah, so the signal's API, RADICO basically leverages that as we touched on that CBRNE kit that they have. What it is is it's a way to have the data stream right into our tablet. So they're underneath the main banner at the top. There'll be another banner that pops up that basically populates with the sensor and the value that it is reading at that time. So that doesn't need to be a sensor in particular. It's just a method for any data to feed into the tablet's UI. So like for example, that's how the rangefinder and the disrupter kit works. It's in that same manner at the top. And it's reading the range that the device is outputting. And then like I touched on, we're also talking about and working through how to get warnings and cautions for those levels as well. And we put in there so that they turn yellow and then red based on the value you want set to alert you. - I think we'll take a couple more questions. So get your questions in there. Oh, I see. There's a follow-up. I'll look at that one second. "If there is a problem of some sort or the robot breaks, what's after-market support like?" Shaun, do you want to talk about Spot here? - Well, specifically, it's talking about Europe. So we do have an office in Frankfurt, Germany as well. So we can provide break fix there. And with Spot Care, it does it does cover the robot for normal use. And you don't have to send most cases back to the US because we now have the Frankfurt office. So it takes less time away from the operator using the robot. - Great. "What's our lead time for order?" - So we like to say it's six to eight weeks, which is, I think, pretty aggressive with robots. But we typically get them out in 30 days or so. But we say six to eight weeks, but we try to beat that. We do a pretty good job at fulfilling the orders. - Awesome. All right. Well, thank you all for your time. Thank you, Shaun and Matt, for your presentation. And thank you all for your amazing questions. We will be sending a link to the presentation after this call. So I saw some questions come in last minute about that. Don't worry, we'll have video of the demonstrations available for you to watch on demand. Again, thank you all for joining us. We'll follow up with questions we didn't get to during our time offline. But thank you all. Thank you, Shaun and Matt. See you next time. - Thanks, Vatche. Thanks, Matt.