Jeff Bezos Takes His Robot Dog for A Walk! Careful, This One Bytes
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos walks his robot dog SpotMini at Amazon’s annual robotics conference in California.
For many dog owners around the world, walking their canine seems to be a boring and tedious tasks. But when the world’s richest man takes his ‘dog’ out for a walk, he takes dog walking to a whole new level.
Jeff Bezos, at Amazon’s MARS conference on Monday, walked out of the Parker Hotel in Palm Springs, California, accompanied by... wait for it... his robot dog!
The annual invite-only gathering plays host to many robotics companies and academics, and focuses on machine learning, automation, robotics and space exploration.
On the opening day of the event, Amazon’s founder posted a picture on his Twitter handle with the caption, “Taking my new dog for a walk at the #MARS2018 conference. #BostonDynamics” and the picture has garnered a lot of attention among techies around the world.
The robot dog, which goes by the name SpotMini, has become an internet sensation ever since a video of it opening the door for another robot dog has surfaced online. SpotMini has been developed by Boston Dynamics, an American engineering and robotics design company.
Bezos was also spotted playing beer pong with another robot at the conference. Despite being a highly intelligent machine, it still failed miserably at it.
Though the tweet also says there’s a drone present at the conference, I could spot it for a moment.
The idea of robots working in the same ecosystem as human beings has been imagined for a long time, and SpotMini’s ‘theatrics’ in California give us a glimpse of what could be a reality very soon.
But, as always, there will be skeptics who feel that robots could have a different role in the future. The best example to cite this would be an episode from the famous Netflix series Black Mirror called ‘Metalhead’, where a SpotMini like robot is on a human hunting spree.
Scared the s*** out of me.
Last year, Jeff Bezos pulled off an even bigger stunt at the annual robotics conference. Literally!
South Korean company Hankook Mirae showcased their 13-foot robot at the event which Jeff Bezos was seen piloting. It was more for show than function, but boy, does Bezos know how to make an entrance!
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