Watch This Robot Endure Abuse While Opening a Door The mechanical hound gets repeatedly blocked from opening and walking through a door, but it never gives up.
By Thomas Newton •
This story originally appeared on PCMag
By now you'll have seen the impressive footage of Boston Dynamics' Spot Mini opening a door with its prehensile limb and front legs; now watch it do the same thing while being impeded by a cruel human master.
In the video below, spotted by TechCrunch, you'll see a Spot Mini being remotely piloted by an off-camera human and then given the "Go" command to open the door. Another Boston Dynamics' employee then whacks the Spot Mini with a hockey stick, slamming shut the door it just opened before yanking back on a lead attached to its rear end.
The Spot Mini continues in its assigned task in the face of escalating abuse, suggesting that we might not want to try the patience of our future robot overlords too much.
Kicking robots is part and parcel of the Boston Dynamics road-testing experience. We've seen the original Spot endure a solid boot in the side when all it was doing was trying to walk to the photocopier.
As Boston Dynamics says in the video's description: "The ability to tolerate and respond to disturbances like these improves successful operation of the robot."
In real-world scenarios, a Spot Mini might have to rethink how it'd open the door should something obstruct its path. Despite a part of its casing actually breaking off in the video, it seems quite able and determined enough to see its task through to completion.
We just hope that after future robots have loaded our dishwashers, they won't mind us being jerks to them too much.
