TheEconomistAugust 29th 2020 631T
hey might appear cutesy, but a pair of
robots that turned up recently at the
Ford Motor Company’s Van Dyke Transmis-
sion Plant, in Detroit, are practical working
machines. They may, indeed, point to the
future of automation. Putting robots into
factories is hardly a new idea—some 2.4m
of them are already at work in plants
around the world. But most of these are lit-
tle more than giant arms, bolted firmly to
the ground, that weld and paint things.
Those few that have the mobility to manage
tasks like delivering components do so by
scooting along on wheels. The new devices
at Van Dyke are rather different sorts of
beasts. They can walk.
This pair of bright-yellow quadrupeds
look a bit like dogs, prompting one to be
nicknamed Fluffy and the other Spot
(which latter moniker is also the official
name given to this model of robot by the
firm that manufactures them, Boston Dyn-
amics, a subsidiary of SoftBank). The pair
are not there to amuse the factory’s human
workers, though, but rather to perform an
important task that Ford hopes will save it a
ton of money. With laser scanners mount-
ed on their backs, Fluffy and Spot can
scamper around the 200,000 square-metre
plant collecting data. Those data will be
employed to build a detailed computer
model of the entire manufacturing opera-
tion. This sort of model is called a digital
twin, and Ford’s engineers will use it to
work out how to rearrange the production
line to produce a new gearbox.
Over the years, factory plans get out of
date as things are moved around and new
equipment is brought in. Surveying the
transmission plant by hand would take
weeks and cost some $300,000. Ford reck-
ons that Fluffy and Spot, which can both
climb stairs and crawl into hard-to-reach
areas, will cut the time required by half and
complete the job for “a fraction of the cost”.Although Ford is leasing the robots, Boston
Dynamics has now put them on sale for
$75,000 a pop. At that price they would
soon pay for themselves doing tasks like
the one being undertaken in Van Dyke.
The Spot range is the first of Boston
Dynamics’s walking robots to be commer-
cialised. More such machines are starting
to appear from other firms and research
groups. Some are also quadrupeds. Others
are bipedal. The two-legged sort can be
more agile and, if equipped with arms as
well, are better suited to tasks like picking
things up or operating controls. What all of
these machines have in common is that
they represent—forgive the pun—a huge
step forward in robot locomotion.Four legs good, two legs better
If robots are to go where people go, they
need to be able to move in the way that peo-
ple move. Wheels are useless for navigat-
ing much of the world—just ask anyone
who uses a wheelchair, says Aaron Ames, a
robotics expert at the California Institute of
Technology (Caltech). “We can make robots
walk really well now,” he says. Such robots
can, though, look a little odd. When a torso
with two legs attached strolls out of Dr
Ames’s laboratory it causes a bit of a sensa-
tion on Caltech’s campus. But this is some-
thing people are going to have to get used
to, because many more are coming.
Problems remain, and improvements
are needed. “But once we get there, we areAutomation
Walking with robots
A new generation of ambulatory machines is striding to market
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