Regarding the Pain of SpotMini: Or What a Robot's Struggle to Learn Reveals about the Built Environment

Abstract

It can feel surprisingly voyeuristic to watch a robot being put through its paces. SpotMini is a quadruped robot developed by Massachusetts firm Boston Dynamics for the commercial market and promoted through online videos. The constant fluctuation of domestic and office environments in terms of both content and configuration presents a real challenge for the computer vision that SpotMini relies on for navigation. Simone C Niquille – principal of Amsterdam avatar creation and identity strategy practice Technoflesh – reports on the project, exploring how such machines’ parameters are defined and what the consequences are for architecture.