The topic of AI is something that many are both interested in, and concerned about. Because on
a certain level, it's understandable why people are so fascinated in having their own Artificial
Intelligence to help them handle things that are either too complicated for them to do, or, for the
AI to do it much faster than they ever could. Of course, the other side of the coin is what happens
when AI gets a bit too clever and Skynet forms as a result. For the team at Boston Dynamics, they're
a group that REALLY want to do AI right, and have a new project that enforces that. Allow us to show
you Boston Dynamics and AI, what you don't know. 5. The Collaboration With IBM
As AI-enabled robots in manufacturing facilities, power plants, warehouse and
other industrial sites continue to expand in use, more potential use cases are constantly being
identified by enterprises that are looking to solve their critical business problems.
In response, IBM and Boston Dynamics are partnering to bring IBM software and Boston
Dynamics’ Spot robots together to find answers for customers who are dealing with challenging
technology requirements at the edge and in a wide range of industrial settings.
The new collaboration between the two companies, which was announced Oct. 26,
will pair their technologies to focus on conducting data analysis at the edge that will
be used to address worker safety, optimize field operations and boost maintenance productivity
across many industrial environments. To fill these needs, IBM Consulting,
in conjunction with AI and hybrid cloud innovations from IBM Research,
is developing edge software applications to work with a variety of attachable “payloads”
that are available for Boston Dynamics’ agile, mobile robot, which is called Spot. The payloads
are essentially specialized modules that include a robotic arm, a pan-tilt-zoom camera,
a thermal camera for analyzing temperatures during inspections, a LIDAR mapping module and attachable
edge CPU or GPU modules. 4.
The Intention Through the partnership,
IBM and Boston Dynamics are essentially using the Spot walking robot as an intelligent roaming edge
device – and equipped with specialized software – that can traverse stairs,
rough topography and indoor or outdoor locations, giving operations staff the
ability to remotely inspect and monitor equipment with dynamic sensing capabilities.
“If IBM was not part of the picture and you bought a Spot robot, you could use it for remote
operations,” Skip Snyder, a senior partner at IBM Consulting who leads the intelligent connected
operations practice, told EnterpriseAI. “If you were responsible for a substation,
you could wake Spot up at the substation and have it move and see what it sees.”
That could include, for example, an inspection of a bank of valves in a power plant and a subsequent
recording of the valve readings, he said. And when those readings are combined with IBM’s edge
applications and the specialized payload modules, customers can gain even more insights, he added.
“What we have done is we put on an edge payload that sits on the back of Spots,
with performance criteria geared toward AI,” said Snyder. Now, using the analytics aboard Spot,
the robot can show what it sees, and customers can run the inferencing at the same time it is
reading the valve readings on the bank of valves. “We can do the inferencing on the edge device
to actually say, ‘OK, at the rate that the pressure is increasing, we are going to be out
of [the permitted pressure range] in about six hours,” said Snyder. “[A worker then needs to]
create a work order and alert somebody and we can actually have Spot create a
work order within an enterprise asset management system,” including IBM’s Maximo Application Suite.
3. Spot On The Job One of the first pilot projects
using the Spot robot and IBM applications is being conducted by the electric and gas utility,
National Grid, which serves Massachusetts and New York. According to the partners,
Spot is being used to conduct regularly-scheduled, autonomous inspections at National Grid sites.
The integration of IBM advanced AI services gives National Grid
new actionable intelligence by processing the data and enabling faster response times
when a problem in a facility system is detected. Currently under field testing is a near real-time
inferencing capability that incorporates thermo-visual analysis from inspection data
collected by the robot, according to the companies. The new analyses should be able
to help identify hotspots and other problems with power station components that could cause serious
equipment failures and power outages if left unrepaired. National Grid is planning to use
edge data processing via the Spot robot to notify maintenance staff workers as soon as any defects
are found so they can make repairs immediately, even as the robot continues its inspection rounds.
The sensing capabilities aboard the Spot robots can scale across multiple facility sites and
across many types of equipment using IBM tools and expertise in edge, 5G, security and hybrid cloud,
according to IBM and Boston Dynamics. The first concepts bringing the two
technologies together began this past January and were quickly seen as game-changing, said Snyder.
“You stop and think about things from an internet of things (IoT) perspective where you can put
sensors on all these assets [used by customers],” he said. “You can put cameras, vibration sensors,
microphones on and you can put payloads together to bring all those sensors to multiple assets.
The other benefit of it is it is freeing up people to do other higher value work.”
Users can even shift among the sensors in a payload and get information across multiple
areas at the same time, giving them more flexibility,
said Snyder. “It is being able to go in and look at a piece of equipment in multiple ways.”
The big differentiator between Spot and other robotic inspection devices is that Spot can
go almost anywhere, he said. “I am talking about assets that are spanning large campuses,
and it is all outside where the temperatures are above 100 degrees or below zero.
But Spot does not care either way and it can walk on whatever terrain happens to be out there.”
Customers can use one Spot robot or multiple Spot robots,
depending on their requirements and the sizes of their facilities.
Research and development are continuing with the technology and new features and capabilities will
continue to be added over time, said Snyder. 2. Critical To The Future
Rob Enderle, principal analyst with Enderle Group, told EnterpriseAI that the partnership
between IBM and Boston Dynamics to make this technology work is understandable.
“We are rolling out the fourth industrial revolution, and no one company can do it
all,” said Enderle. “Collaborations like this will be critical to assuring that the coming
waves of technology do not also represent a growing danger to the humans that must work
in and around these emerging technologies.” At the same time, the announcement “showcases
a critical step to the growing number of autonomous machines that it seems most are
missing – the need to update the related hardware,” said Enderle. “These robots,
which will eventually be used in massive numbers, need to be maintained and updated to fix bugs,
provide more advanced features and distribute training. IBM may be uniquely capable of providing
the secure connections needed to capture data at scale to determine if patches and updates
are necessary and help deliver those updates securely, so the robots are not compromised.”
1. Robotic Future While Boston Dynamics and IBM aren't the only ones
working on projects like this, it is interesting to see them all at work trying to infuse AI into
the infrastructure of the work force. But in truth, if they're able to get this working
in a way that truly helps, people will benefit. Why is that? Because there are plenty of jobs in
the role of inspector that NEED to be filled but aren't for one reason or another. So now imagine a
robot like Spot, or a drone going and inspecting places that humans don't already look out, or,
are unable to see in a typical perspective? The AI would be able
to detect the problem and then report it so that the proper people can fix it on a dime.
AI robots like Spot (and others that Boston Dynamics are making like Atlas) are growing
in capability and intelligence with each new generation of the robot. So them being put into
the workforce is proof that things are going right and that they can help people on the job out.
That is until they go and get so smart that they realize the humans should be working for them.
As a great robot once said, "Judgment Day Is Inevitable".
So what do you think? What do you think of this look at Boston Dynamics and the AI they're
making with IBM and beyond? Are you surprised that they're trying to push this style of AI
towards production on many levels? What else do you think they're capable of doing if they make
the AI smart enough? Let us know in the comments below, and we'll see you next time on the channel!