Mar 012016
So, here’s a video of a Boston Dynamics “Spot” robot (human controlled, *not* autonomous) interacting with an actual dog. One thing that’s immediately obvious… regardless of how impressive an engineering achievement Spot is, that dog can run circles around it.
Now, I don;t know from dogs. Some people are saying that this is a confused, disturbed or angry dog, challenging the robot to a fight; others suggest that this is a dog trying to get the robot to play with it. I dunno. Now, if in a year or three Boston Dynamics scales Spot down to cat size and has it interact with a cat, I foresee one of two probable outcomes:
- The cat just ignores the robot and goes back to sleep
- The cat arches its back, hisses, freaks out and runs away
I just don’t see cats ever looking at robots like this as playpals.