Boston Dynamics, the company behind some of the most impressively terrifying and terrifyingly impressive robots of the past decade, is demonstrating its softer side with a video showcasing the Alphabet-owned firm’s latest creation.
The SpotMini is a sort of tiny robot giraffe capable of an impressive battery of skills, demonstrated in the video by jaunting up a flight of stairs, putting dishes in the dishwasher and (somewhat begrudgingly) delivering a can of soda.
The robot is both more adorable (in that David Lynch directing a Transformers movie kind of way) and significantly smaller and lighter than the firm’s other offerings, weighing “55 pounds dripping wet” or 65, if you add on that arm/head combo.
The non-hydraulic mini version of the company’s Spot robot runs for 90 minutes on a charge and sports a slew of different sensors including depth cameras and a a solid state gyro to help it move around and interact with its environment. The bot also features a level of autonomy for certain tasks – though some human guidance is also required to get the job done.
The plucky robot is also pretty adept at recovering from a comedic banana peel-induced spill, as well.