Marc Raibert, CEO of Boston Dynamics, talks with Daniela Rus at MIT about Spot, robot design and applications, research, and how robotics may affect people and work.
Raibert demonstrates Spot climbing stairs using cameras and onboard controls that help it find steps and place its feet. He describes the robot as a platform that can carry sensors, computers, or an arm. Coordinating the arm with the mobile base lets the robot reposition itself for tasks that a fixed arm could not reach.
Raibert says his work on legged robots grew from a desire to reproduce the bouncing, dynamic movement of people and animals. He argues that strong robotics depends on both capable hardware and computation, designed to work together. Boston Dynamics made Spot available to users to learn whether the platform could solve real problems.
Raibert describes Spot surveying radiation at Chernobyl, inspecting equipment on oil rigs, detecting gas leaks and reading gauges at a refinery, and checking dangerous electrical facilities. He says users also scan sites to create digital models. Boston Dynamics' Stretch, by contrast, is designed specifically to pick up boxes, a task Raibert says involves roughly half a trillion boxes each year.
Raibert says Boston Dynamics continues research alongside work on Spot and Stretch, with Atlas as one example and smarter robots as a stated aim. He sees robots as technology that brings both opportunities and risks, and says home robots must become affordable, useful, and safe. He points to helping older or disabled people as a potential use, while acknowledging concerns about jobs and arguing that robotics may also create work in building, maintaining, and programming robots.
Briefs summarise talks and interviews; timestamps open the video at that moment. Claims in a talk are the speaker's own.
Marc Raibert, founder of Boston Dynamics and executive director of the Boston Dynamics AI Institute, talks with Lex Fridman on the Lex Fridman Podcast about legged robotics, robot intelligence, and the work ahead.
Marc Raibert, robotics researcher and founder of the AI Institute, discusses Boston Dynamics’ robots and the research culture he wants to build at the IROS 35th Anniversary Forum.
MIT professor and CSAIL director Daniela Rus talks with NEXT host John Koetsier about the limits of general-purpose robots, how specialized and modular machines could help people, and the technical and social challenges of automation.
A Boston Dynamics Prototype Operations team member explains how the company builds and improves Atlas, from precision machining through assembly and testing, alongside its engineers.
Boston Dynamics engineers discuss the design, simulation, and dexterity of Atlas’s new hands.
Boston Dynamics’ robotics team discusses Atlas’s path to industrial work at Hyundai Motor Group’s Robotics Metaplant Application Center, with a host visiting the facility.
