Boston Dynamics, the maker of the robot dog, Spot, have announced that their machine is now available for sale and lease. The company says that Spot is available now but does not say how much it costs, instead you have to contact their sales team. While no exact pricing was given, VP of business development at the firm, Michael Perry, said that an early adopter program lease is going to cost less than the price of a car.
Given the cost of Spot, you can probably tell that it’s not oriented towards consumers, but rather, businesses. Additionally, even if a business has the money to splash out for Spot robots, Boston Dynamics only has a scarce number of unit so it’s looking for businesses that have an interesting use case for them.
While Boston Dynamics has been a bit hush-hush with the pricing, it has been open with the device’s specifications, they are as follows:
| Speed | 1.6 m/s |
| Runtime | 90 min |
| Battery | Swappable |
| Vision | 360 degrees |
| Ingress Protection | IP54 |
| Operating Environment | -20c to 45c |
| Payload Connection | DB25 |
| Payload Capacity | 14 kg |
Some suggested applications that Spot might be good at include working on construction sites to inspect progress, it could be used at oil and gas fields to remotely inspect facilities and improve awareness of plant operations, and it could be used for public safety allowing police to remotely approach dangerous areas.
Source: IEEE Spectrum