it's robot time i'm adam savage from tested with my favorite robotic platform spot from boston
dynamics now we've been playing with spot and running him through his paces for the better part
of a year so far and we love him and as we take him out and about pretty much everybody loves him
but what they really love is when we pop at him when we give him some character when we give him
uh some other movements besides just walking or jogging or going up and down stairs
and boston dynamics has just recently added a whole taxonomy of brand new
movements that spot can do and that's what this video is about we're going
to take a deep dive and just find out how much he can shake his booty
a note about the footage you're about to see uh you're gonna see me working directly with spot
and close to him uh and i'm gonna look like i'm comfortable and that's because i am that
comfort is based on a year of institutional knowledge built on working directly with
the wonder that is spot um if you think that i'm being cavalier in terms of my proximity to him
know that nothing could be farther from the truth all of us here at tested as we have worked with
spot are very cognizant of the dangers and are being incredibly careful when we're around him
while his motors are powered with that being said let's get to the location all right norm this
almost looks like editing software is is that how this works it's the first thing that uh i thought
it would as well um so for a long time we've been controlling spot with this guy right and i
know a lot of people commented in the videos like what is that controller it looks so cool but it's
really it's an android tablet with thumbsticks and it runs boston dynamics software and yeah
a lot of that functionality is ported this special now choreographer software which is like after
effects or an editing video editing software or an animation piece of software honestly
where you have a timeline where you linearly drop these movements they've pre-programmed
onto the timeline and these are the movements in their categories body step dynamic transition neil
and there's sub movements within that and you can drag and drop those into the timeline totally i
mean one of the things i've been realizing after working a couple of weeks with this is
dancing and even thinking about a few seconds of movement it's a lot of complex minutia to it right
even a second of dancing isn't you can't think of it as one move it's legs body what the arms are
doing right there's a get ready move there's an execution there's a recovery yes a recovery time
right so you think about so can you tip him over by accident absolutely i've done it so many times
i want to push him to the limits yeah yeah yeah so something really cool is like a jump move and
i queue up jump it's a very dynamic move and you can instantly preview it so spot's gonna jump
right yeah and you can already see there there's a little bit of uh variables i've adjusted you
can do lateral jumping that was a little bit of a on the y-axis you're adjusting by milliseconds or
seconds here uh yeah some amount of distance yeah they do cap it so of course the team there have
done their limits of testing but i can change like how he lands like so if i want him to jump and
land with a very narrow stance let's see if this works and preview on the robot
and his feet came in yeah right so all that tiny minutiae it's not just make spot jump 10 times in
a row how do you want him to jump do you want to jump to the side do you want them to jump
and do a little bit of a twist all that's possible that's um that's a huge an addition to
the functionality because on the on the controller we've been using it's literally like hop or skip
or jump or crawl or walk is like seven different things but the parameters within those things
can't really adjust but this is like super fine control over every aspect extremely fun control
and even moves like really with dancing in mind they have things like a little running man move
and each move is one step oh like you know play this over and over again you adjust the variable
so that one step copy and paste it drag it into your timeline and then combine it with
other things you know to lead it into a sway to do some pretty crazy things as
well this is one of my favorites it's a stand to anneal stanton so it's standing right now
what i didn't know it could do that what here look at that dude shake it exactly
that position is what boss dynamics calls anneal and then within this neil framework
yeah you can even move it's no way a little bit and do a little bit of a dance right
so you can do boxing like a kangaroo yep and then if you want you have to remember to do other
things to get back to normal you need to go back to anneal to a stand so some of the moves very
basic no variables just get back into a normal position wow uh but i'll play you a little short
sequence yeah yeah i started and this is just four actions the running man love that hot step yes
it's gonna go to a kneel and then a little bit of a golf club at the end he's very pleased with
himself as any robot would be so i thought it'd be fun to let's go through the list and we can
explore some of the movements by all means let me know some of the ones that resonate with you
yeah and then we'll take a look in programming oh it's not a touch screen
call it twerk a straight up call it a torque move and it's just a little bit
let's see what the height okay let's try it again that's one twerk an interesting thing
is when you have something they call sway yeah right it's a little bit of a move but you can
change where you want its pivot to be is it anchored from the front is it anchored from
the back when it does a sway so even you know when your body is swaying because it's kind of
like in this animal pose yeah yeah like where do you want that's really cool um let's see uh
right dynamic it's a hop why don't you ask let's do some more jumping
wow not only is he jumping but he's also turning as he's jumping can we make him spin in a circle
yeah let's try oh absolutely that was like almost a 90. and one of the things is if you
look at this timeline it's split off into you know four by four and it beats right
and you can even change the beat timing if i want this jump to be set to 100 beats
all right that's basically where it goes let's see if that's the correct jump doing a little bit
of a circle i don't need it to move laterally so we'll just have it do that but let's stop
these let's stack it let's let's do like eight chests in a row all right let's see what happens
that that's amazing yeah can i see that again i'm just like really amazed by that
there is so much going on in there
i feel like the body twist is part of the uh torsional recovery yes yeah and then all
that because it's like natural to how bodies move yeah it makes you feel more alive too wow
let's see the most it can turn okay
dude wait a second do that again i want to see how what the turn is
that's a 90. that's a full 90 degree turn holy cow let's see if we can add a bunch of those
yeah yeah yeah see if it can turn let's see is it 90 degrees or here
yeah that's 90 right that was a full 90. so that should be this should be a full revolution
so nifty i feel sorry for whoever is in the office below the room we're in but besides that
dude you could go even a little bit tighter oh yes that's it
wow you're doing internal external internal exactly
can i see that again yeah i'm gonna even push it further i'll be really impressed if it can do this
okay do that one again it's really hard not to curse good boy so while we have spot self writing
i think we adequately pushed its limits there like we had to turn 90 degrees and transition
from a really wide stance to a small one jumping jack style well i mean what i find exciting is
clearly like i said it's a taxonomy of movements but it's not like every possible use case has
been worked out this is this is it's an ongoing set of development so like that is super cool i
never that's the fastest way he could turn right don't that's faster than him going you know and
it's a completely different approach to when we were using the controller yeah because those it
was combining the just lateral movements with the ability to stay upright at all times right with
whatever gate it was moving it was always going to be steady right here much more flexibility and
to push the limits of the spot that's really cool made your adjustments yep let's try this
oh god dude
so they've also included a bunch of um pre-scripted sequences
and i think let's watch those because they'll give a sense of how these movements
flow from one to another totally and see which ones you like all right oh he's doing it
wow
laughs
okay that's like my favorite walk so far
that's my favorite don't point it right at the camera that's a little obvious spot
what i love about this walk is that my dog huxley had different ways his body would move
depending upon his mood while running or walking and like i'm starting to see a whole world of
possibility with spot dude with different gates so this move here adam you really like was a
combination of a sway and a crawl oh it's two things and the crawl so it's stacking
the body movement which is a sway and the crawl which you like with a specific velocity
for each leg movement oh wow so let's play it back one more time you can see it does sway
that's a sway yeah right then wow very closely is the crawl i love that it's like tiptoeing
it's a such a light touch on the floor for him
and really that combination yeah of the sway plus the crawl gives it the tip silver that's great
wow it's got really good time
i love that
yes
that's all okay can we do something like this uh
he does his um this one the running man running man and then jump running man dumb
running man jump let's can we try that yeah let's try that all right
run okay adam so i think i got this you want
a jump when it's turning then do a little bit of running man yep
then again okay and let's do it increase the beats per minute so the higher tempo okay cool
dude
it's easy to look at the refined package that spot is right now and think of it like it's
a laser printer kind of machine but it's not this is much more akin to a dot matrix
printer by which i'm saying spot is still way early on in his
development and just like the form video that we released uh late last year
everything we're doing to play with him is informing how he can perform in the future
and we're learning as we go i mean the difference between what spot can do today
and what spot we'll be able to do two years from now is massive and i'm so psyched with
that that's why it's so thrilling for tessa to be part of that mix right now isn't that right spot
yeah it took us a while to work out that timing thank you buddy you did good today
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