Find the robot dog that does cartwheels

Searching for the limit

Spot, the Boston Dynamics robot, is already almost a celebrity, transporting loads in factories, inspecting dangerous places and even dancing on television shows, but now he has surprised the public again by consistently executing backflips.

A feat that seems like pure entertainment, but that hides a much more technical reason, in fact, no one imagines spot giving mortals on a daily basis within an industry, it's just that these extreme movements are the way in which engineers found themselves to push robots to the limit.

With each jump it becomes unbalanced, demands its motors and energy systems to the maximum and learns to recover from unexpected falls, as Arun Kumar, engineer of the Spot Behavior team, explained, “it is not about putting on a show, but about testing the most critical conditions so that the robot is reliable in any scenario.”

From the virtual world to the real world.

This type of training is possible thanks to reinforcement learning, it works in a similar way to training a dog, in simulation, Spot receives rewards when he makes correct movements and little by little perfects his posture and balance, when the behavior works well in the virtual environment, the team transfers it to the real robot and tests it, if something fails, the engineers analyze the errors and adjust the model.

It's a continuous cycle of try, fail, reward and refine, the logic is simple, but powerful, in teaching Spot to do something as difficult as a backflip. The team ensures that they will be prepared for more common situations such as slipping while carrying a box or tripping on a construction site. In those moments, the ability to recover quickly without damaging oneself or the load can be crucial. Of course, the more striking side ends up bringing global attention and Spot has already appeared dancing on the Americans God Talent stage, showing his coordination in choreographed routines.

But ultimately each stunt is a scientific test disguised as a spectacle, Boston Dynamics is betting that the more it is pushed to the limit in the laboratory, the more reliable it will be in the real world.