Boston Dynamics partners with Google Cloud and DeepMind to put Gemini Robotics-ER 1.6 into Spot and the Orbit inspection platform
Boston Dynamics is integrating Gemini Robotics-ER 1.6 into its Spot quadruped and its Orbit AI visual-inspection platform, in partnership with Google Cloud and DeepMind. The most recognisable robot platform in the world adopting a foundation model as its reasoning layer.
Boston Dynamics built its reputation on control, not cognition — the hardware was extraordinary and the autonomy was narrow. Adopting an external foundation model for embodied reasoning is a strategic concession that the reasoning layer is now better bought than built, and that the defensible part is the platform.
Orbit is the more commercially interesting half. Visual inspection is a real deployed workload with a measurable error cost, which makes it a far better test of embodied reasoning than a demo video of a robot dancing.
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