Surrounded By Robots
A VR field trip inside the Boston Dynamics lab.
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You’ve likely seen the Boston Dynamics robots on YouTube—creepy humanoids climbing stairs or running on a treadmill, knees bent and a little hurried, like they need to find a bathroom fast. Or maybe you were one of the many viewers who winced at the “cruelty” of BD engineers kicking Spot the robot dog to make it fall over.
Now these lovably disturbing robots have come to virtual reality, which turns the creepiness factor up a notch. The VR producers at Within went behind the scenes at the Boston Dynamics workshop to watch some of the world’s foremost roboticists do their thing. We stand in the middle of a pack of robot dogs, accompany the bots on a hike through the woods, and listen to BD founder Marc Raibert explain why kicking Spot isn’t really cruel (although the researchers do delight in a good crash).
It’s a good subject for VR, and the filmmakers at Within deliver.
What does any of this have to do with air and space? Maybe its future.