Where Quadruped Robodogs Are Finding Work in a Tight Labor Market
A number of quadruped robodogs have been put to work in roles such as inspection and public safety. At their core, these four-legged robots are mobile platforms that can be fitted with different payloads depending on the type of information companies want to collect.
Competition in the quadruped robot market is heating up. In the US, Boston Dynamics has been developing its Spot robot for about 10 years. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is also working on a smaller quadruped bot called Mini Cheetah. Ghost Robotics in Philadelphia builds robots for military use, while Swiss company Anybotics produces the Anymal quadruped robot for industrial clients.
Chinese companies such as Deep Robotics, Weilan and Unitree Robotics are building their own versions. However, the last two companies appear to be at least partly focused on the personal robot market.
According to Allied Market Research, the global inspection robot market generated $940 million in 2020 and is expected to reach nearly $14 billion by 2030. Take National Grid, an electric and gas utility company serving customers in Massachusetts, New York and Rhode Island.
The company used two robots made by Boston Dynamics to carry out scheduled inspections. The robots are equipped with lidar to help them navigate, as well as visual and thermal imaging cameras to capture detailed photos and thermal images of equipment at the substation.
Before using Spot, most inspections at National Grid substations were carried out by people. In some cases, substation operations would have to be temporarily halted, because it would be unsafe for people to conduct inspections while the equipment was running.
“We consider investing in a robot to be a sensible move, as it improves safety conditions for our employees. The robot also has the advantage that it repeats everything with ease. It captures images from the same angle and the same viewpoint every time, which is very useful because it allows us to compare images collected at different times with each other, so we can see any trends or changes”
Boston Dynamics' Spot robodog has also been used by pharmaceutical group Merck and BP to autonomously read sensor data, monitor corrosion and measure methane on some of its oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico. Malaysian oil and gas company Petronas uses Anybotics robodogs to inspect its offshore platforms. Brazilian mining corporation Vale is another company using Anymal from Anybotics.
After completing initial testing, Vale is buying a robot to carry out inspections and collect data on the condition of equipment at one of its mines. Vale says that Anymal's help with inspections spares its employees from having to enter potentially dangerous areas that are often filled with dust, noise and moving parts of equipment.
German chemical company BASF is also testing Anymal at one of its chemical plants, where the robot collects visual, thermal and acoustic data on equipment. Both Spot and Anymal have also been deployed at construction sites, and in the case of Anymal, at railway stations to inspect trains.
“These companies typically need to send teams of trained people to collect data on the condition of their plants. That is why their vision is to use robots such as Anymal to automate some of these tasks, so their employees stay safe and companies can save on some of the costs associated with actually transporting people to the site”
Other use cases for quadruped robots are only beginning to gain traction. One of the most contentious is using these devices for security. In May 2021, the New York Police Department said it would end its testing of one of Boston Dynamics' Spot robots earlier than planned because of strong public backlash.
“Spot's role in public safety is to keep people out of harm's way. The New York Police Department tried to use Spot specifically as a point of contact with a potentially barricaded and armed suspect who was holding hostages. This is a good use case for a robot”
Although the robot in the New York Police Department incident was not armed and was remotely operated by a police officer, concerns about the use of fully autonomous robots led to an initiative known as the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots. The coalition seeks to ban the development, production and use of fully autonomous weapons.
For Ghost Robotics, the defense market is the main source of funding. The Philadelphia company says that of its more than 20 customers, 90% are the US government and its allies. One such customer is the US Air Force, which uses the Vision 60 robot to patrol several bases.
The Air Force said the robots can operate across a wide temperature range and are equipped with 14 sensors to provide situational awareness. Ghost Robotics has also signed a deal with Singapore's Defence Science and Technology Agency. The agency said it will test and develop use cases for quadruped robots in security, defense and humanitarian applications.
So far, Spot has been used to monitor vital signs of Covid-19 patients in hospitals, measure radiation at nuclear power plants such as Chernobyl, and remind people to keep social distance during the pandemic.
NASA is also sending teams of Boston Dynamics robots into caves to see whether they could one day be used to search for life on other planets. Farmers Insurance said the company will deploy Spot alongside its claims adjusters to assess damage caused by hurricanes, tornadoes and other weather events.
Experts predict that the insurance industry alone will spend $1.7 billion on robotics in 2025. Other industries may follow suit. Amid the pandemic, a tight labor market is pushing many companies toward automation. A McKinsey survey conducted in December 2020 found that 51% of respondents in North America and Europe increased their investment in new technologies during 2020.
“As a company, we are truly committed to introducing this artificial workforce so that people and robots work shoulder to shoulder to solve complex problems. Our vision is that people should not perform work that is dangerous where they really should not be. So our vision over the next 10 years is that it will become standard to hire either a person or a robot for a specific job”
However, such robots are far from cheap. Anymal from Anybotics costs $150,000, but the company says this includes a fully autonomous platform that comes with lidar and a docking station. Ghost Robotics' Vision 60 robot also costs around $150,000. Boston Dynamics' entry-level Spot research robot costs from $75,000, but does not include a self-charging docking station and has more limited autonomous capabilities compared with the company's more expensive "enterprise model".
