Robot dog testing comes to downtown Detroit as part of Bedrock, Boston Dynamics program

Bedrock tests robot dogs in Downtown Detroit

A new wave of tourists will soon be hitting the streets of Downtown Detroit... on four legs. Bedrock Detroit and Boston Dynamics. preparing to launch a fleet of robot dogs throughout the city. The initiative is part of an effort to make Detroit a proving ground for cutting-edge tech of the future. Bedrock Detroit's Senior Director for Urban Strategy and Innovation gives FOX 2 a sneak preview of what to expect.

FOX 2 - If you see a robot dog roaming around downtown Detroit, Bedrock and Boston Dynamics are the reason why.

The backstory:

They are putting "Spot" to the test to see how these robots could one day inspect buildings, map difficult areas, and go places that may not be safe for all people.

It's part of a bigger push to make Detroit a testing ground for the technology of tomorrow, according to Kevin Mull, who is Bedrock Detroit's senior director for Office of Urban Strategy.

Mull stopped by FOX 2 with Astro, a close approximation of the actual robot dogs that will be utilized.

"This is Astro. It's going to help us with the description of what we're doing, but a different platform," he said.

Mull calls the dog, an autonomous mobile sensing platform.

"It's really in its most useful state when it's doing jobs or tasks that are either, you know, very tedious or dangerous or dirty," he said.

The product is called Spot from Boston Dynamics.

"Building inspection use cases, so walking around buildings, looking for different things. Kind of traditional security patrol applications, like in a parking garage," he said. "We're looking at it for package handling. So if a drone, for example, were to land a package on a roof, could the robot then take that package and deliver it into the building?"

Detroit Robot Dog Tasks

Dig deeper:

They could also be used for helping keep the city clean, Mull added.

"One of the ones that we think is really interesting, is the ability to pick up litter," he said. "And that might be the one that people would see downtown, as we're gonna be testing as early as next week. This kind of platform with a robotic arm that can pick up trash as small as a cigarette butt."

Preparation for the project has been going on behind the scenes for the last six to eight months before the upcoming public debut.

"You know, there are a lot of robots operating in big, wide-open spaces in warehouses and things like that," Mull said. "But when you need to move into an environment that was designed for a human being, then it has to have incredible navigation ability, agility to go upstairs, things like, go through doors."

Testing Phase to Begin Soon

So far it is just in a testing phase for the robot dogs in Detroit.

"There are use cases that the product is already capable of, and we're just trying to see how it would work in that use case in our environment," he said. "There are others that are emerging, like litter pickup. That's a solution that's not yet in the market. So we're one of the first places that Boston Dynamics is testing that. And I think that's a real shout out for Detroit.

"This super-important robotics company is doing their testing in Detroit in our portfolio, and we are very excited about that," he said. "(There will be a) test mode with oversight for another few months. If the testing goes well, it will be deployed in a live environment."

FOX 2: "Bedrock would be the first customer, or will there be potentially others?"

"Yeah, I mean, Boston Dynamics is working with a lot of others. I think downtown, we're probably the first one to deploy their platform spot. But that's one of many other robots of different form factors that we're testing for things like floor-cleaning and ground-based package delivery."