Local company creates robotic dogs that could save lives

BERKELEY, Calif. (KGO) -- After a lot of research, a Bay Area company developed a robotic dog that runs on gasoline and moves like a real animal.

By now, you may have seen the video of a robot named Spot that acts an awful lot like a dog and has been making the rounds on YouTube.

The research to create these kinds of robots was done in the Bay Area and it's technology that could save lives.

Last Spring, ABC7 News got to visit the makers of a robot called Wildcat. "We create the best legged robotics on earth," one man said.

Boston Dynamics had just been acquired by Google. The company is known for making big robots that move like animals.

One robot called Big Dog has something in common with Wildcat because it runs on gasoline.

"We have used internal combustion engines because the power density per weight is a lot higher than that of a battery," Boston Dynamics technician and fabricator Bill Washburn said.

The company revealed another robotic dog named Rhex that is completely electric and now so is their newest robot called Spot.

With no fumes and hardly any noise, Spot can tiptoe around indoors. Of course, that might not be where he's most useful.

"Very uneven surfaces, with jagged rocks, steep inclines, there's not a tractor or a wheeled vehicle that can go over that terrain," he said.

Like the robots before him, Spot was built based on a careful study of how real animals move. The term for that is called bio-inspired robotics and a lot of the research has happened right at UC Berkeley.

"The animals currently are so much better than the robots are that the more we can understand about the animals, the better we can make our robots," electrical engineering professor Ronald Fearing said.

Fearing runs the lab where they're building robots modeled after cockroaches with a little bit of lizard mixed in. "Because a lizard can whip its tail around and help it to turn. So it swings the tail and the robot will turn," he said.

When asked to see Spot run, Fearing was most impressed with how the cyber-canine handles the unexpected. "I think when it's going up stairs and it misses a spot, that's actually a great test, because you want to build a system where if things don't go right, it still works," he said.

Robots like Rhex are being used for search and rescue, a trick Spot could be learning soon because legs can go where wheels can't. "And so the idea is that these robots will be able to go places where it's too dangerous for people to go," Fearing said.