The bipedal humanoids may, in fact, be coming — but the quadrupeds are already here. They’re in labs, doing inspections in power plants and refineries, playing soccer and are even — much to the concern of many — becoming cops.
Boston Dynamics’ Spot is easily the most instantly recognizable of the bunch, but plenty of startups and research institutions have put their own spin on the category. Heck, even Xiaomi made one for some reason. While the purveyors of bipeds look to prove out their work, quadrupeds are getting the job done.
The team at Google’s DeepMind (which recently absorbed a large chunk of Alphabet’s beleaguered Everyday Robots team) just issued a research paper ou...
