At present, however, most of Spot’s applications are remote controlled (very much maintaining a ‘human in the loop’) and it has not yet been demonstrated or used as a platform for the exercise of lethal force. Interestingly, despite Boston Dynamics appearing to have spent much of the last five years gearing Spot more toward a commercial or industrial market, it is Spot that has become something of a public touchstone for debates over the development and deployment of artificially intelligent robots for military and security purposes. Amongst the other tech firms working on variations of robot quadrupeds are Ghost Robotics (on which more later), the MIT Biomimetics Lab, the Swiss firm Anybotics, and Chinese companies Deep Robotics and Weilan. While Boston Dynamics has been at the forefront of the development of legged robots since the early 1990s and is the most recognizable company working in this area, they are now operating in a more crowded and competitive field. It is these images that have engaged, enthralled, and sometimes terrified a global audience, with the aforementioned YouTube video having been viewed over 140 million times and Boston Dynamics currently holding just under three million subscribers on that platform alone. Earlier publicity videos released by Boston Dynamics presented a somewhat more menacing picture, particularly the 2018 video of a pair of Spots, with their whirring, rhythmic gait, working together to open and enter a door (Boston Dynamics 2018a). In these videos, Spot comes across as a cute, slick piece of robotic technology that can perform some impressive moves and mechanical tasks in commercial and domestic environments. Spot’s also been seen conducting a surveillance missions on factory floors and building sites (Boston Dynamics 2018b) and working alongside the NYPD (Stephen 2021). Over recent years publicity videos have revealed Spot pulling a rickshaw (Adam Savage’s Tested 2020), herding sheep (Rocos-Robot Operations Platform 2020), climbing stairs (Aker BP ASA 2020), and dancing (Boston Dynamics 2018c). In recent months, Boston Dynamics’ Spot seems to have popped up in a variety of places. Where is Spot? And by Spot, we don’t mean the cute yellow puppy from the famous childrens’ books by Eric Hill, but the yellow robotic one designed by Boston Dynamics and released for public sale in 2019. This is an example of a more general strategy advocates use to garner acceptance for autonomous robots in both civilian and military roles using humanitarian justifications: the robots ‘save lives.’ We conclude by discussing how Spot and other robot quadrupeds demonstrate the intertwining of humanitarian and military applications in the development, normalization and deployment of autonomous robots. We then discuss how humanitarian applications, including in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, have been used as an opportunity to promote Spot and overcome public negativity. This is followed by our text analysis of social media reactions to Boston Dynamics’ quadrupeds, revealing public fascination as well as ongoing suspicion and dark humour about ‘killer robots’. In this paper we first trace the development of Spot and highlight the interest of the United States military in its development. sensors, robotic arm) and software to command Spot to conduct specific missions. Spot has been designed to be a platform, which can be augmented with hardware payloads (e.g. In 2019 Boston Dynamics began commercial sale of ‘Spot’, a moving, sensing, networked robot dog. Boston Dynamics’ robotic quadrupeds have achieved infamy and virality through a series of social media videos since 2008.
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