Why the future of robotics may be four-legged

Many will remember that before New Year's, Boston Dynamics published a video showing its robots dancing. Even Elon Musk then took a break from his busy schedule to share this video on Twitter. 

Someone in the comments asked how much time and money had been spent on this marketing move. Boston Dynamics belongs to Hyundai Group, so if someone decided it would be fun to watch cute robots dance, that became a new priority for the talented development team. 

However, in terms of cuteness, the robot dog Spot wins. Moreover, it is the first of the robots offered for sale. It is already appearing in commercial use in hazardous environments, such as oil rigs. 

Man's Best Friend

When most people think of robots, they picture anthropomorphic bipedal androids. However, the robots of the future are unlikely to look like us. Experts believe that robots will be highly specialized for specific purposes or will resemble man's best friend. In other words, they will have four legs or none at all. 

Such statements are backed by at least two events. First, ANYbotics (the creators of ANYmal, a platform of autonomous quadruped robots for various industrial purposes) raised $22.3 million to continue development and scaling. Second, Hyundai acquired control of Boston Dynamics (the market leader in quadruped robots) for $1.1 billion. 

The quadruped robot market is still considered young. As a rule, research in this area has been limited to universities, which have had some success in trying to sell their four-legged bots. Although startups such as Ghost Robotics attract interest from the military sector, the leading companies remain those developing adaptable quadruped robots with a wide range of applications. 

Why four legs are better than two

Quadruped robots are easier to build and program, and they are also much more stable and reliable than their bipedal counterparts. That is why quadruped robots have become the standard test bed for new mobile robotics systems. 

The preference for quadruped robots is also driven by their current range of applications. The main value of walking robots lies in their ability to enter environments where it would be difficult or impossible for humans to survive. This means the robots must traverse rough terrain and remain stable. Quadruped robots handle these tasks excellently. 

Such bots lift only one leg at a time, so they can always remain stable on the other three. They also have a lower center of gravity than anthropomorphic robots, which makes them easier to program for walking. That is why quadruped bots are preferred in the three main areas where they are currently used: warehouse automation and retail, sewer network inspection, and firefighting. 

A Large Accessible Market

Despite the promising applications of these robots, the market for such devices remains underdeveloped. This is not due to a lack of interest, but because most active research in this field is conducted under the auspices of universities. Almost all prototypes of quadruped robots released so far have been developed and built by academic research labs, for example the DFKI Robotics Innovation Center in Germany or the HyQ robot from Italy.

Chinese universities play a major role. The Institute of Automation and Unitree Robotics in China have created their own promising versions of these robots. In the US, the Mini Cheetah is also a robot developed and built by a university.

Worth mentioning is Sony's Aibo, a robotic dog that is rightly considered the cutest quadruped robot. Today, two companies dominate the quadruped robot market: ANYbotics and Boston Dynamics, which we will look at in more detail. 

ANYbotics

The company began as an academic research group. It was based at ETH Zurich, a global center for robotics research. ANYmal robots can operate for several hours without recharging, have high-performance computers, and are fully autonomous. 

ANYbotics focuses on reliability for industrial applications. The robots are more resistant to harsh environmental conditions, so the company can sign profitable contracts with factories and power plants. In addition, the Swiss company's products are automatically approved for use in the EU. 

Boston Dynamics

Founded back in 1992, the company started as a spin-off of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and was acquired by Google in 2013. In 2017, Boston Dynamics was sold to SoftBank, which then sold it to Hyundai Group. In 2018, the quadruped robot Spot went viral, after which the company became a leader in quadruped bots. 

However, until mid-2020 many analysts feared the company was a real mirage. Although many attractive videos were released, Boston Dynamics robots could not be purchased. They were only leased to a few select companies as part of an early adoption program. 

Now anyone can order the Spot Explorer quadruped robot from the company's online store for $74,500. The start of sales was a turning point for the robotics industry, since a general-purpose robot with AI was released for commercial purposes for the first time. 

Many of those who watched the videos of dancing robots doubted they were real. Some thought it was made possible by CGI. However, ANYbotics and Boston Dynamics are certainly not going to stop at programming robots to perform the moonwalk. The success of these companies is already inspiring many startups to create autonomous robotic friends of humanity.