The robot dog’s name is Spot. Not the most original name for a dog but it suits this robotic canine perfectly because it’s equipped with a laser-scanning camera, allowing it to spot all kinds of things architects would find useful.
The Boston office of CBT Architects recently had the opportunity to see Spot run, courtesy of its maker, Boston Dynamics. The agile robot’s ability to navigate around obstacles impressed the team, but its capabilities to gather data humans currently collect may have intimidated some. Children visiting with their parents that day dug the bot, eagerly controlling Spot via remote. The real, biological office dog, however, wasn’t a fan, barking and hiding from his mechanical counterpart.
Spot is proving useful in a variety of industries—construction, security, manufacturing, and food packaging, to name a few. But its visit to CBT Architects demonstrated potential uses in architecture.
Nirva Fereshetian, CBT principal and chief information officer, says Spot may have a role in enhancing the human experience within built environments. Consider what Spot is already doing in manufacturing. As manufacturing plants change layouts, add new machines, and remove old equipment, stakeholders need to understand how these changes will impact operations and logistics. Spot helps by laser scanning an environment to create a “digital twin”—a dynamic virtual replica that gives a preview of changes considered.
Fereshetian sees how that would be applicable in architecture.
Let’s say you’re about to tackle a big renovation project. Deploy Spot to the site to conduct detailed analysis, measure dimensions, and gather point cloud data, which architects can use to build 3D models in AutoCAD, Revit, and Rhino. Spot also has the capability to report how spaces are used, detecting patterns of behavior at a site and identifying deviations from intent. Fereshetian notes that while spaces are often designed with a specific purpose, they might be used differently in practice. Spot's data can help uncover mismatches between design and intent, allowing architects to adapt their plans or improve functionality.
“Between art and science, design provides solutions,” says Fereshetian, who leads CMT’s Digital Design Practice Group. “For that to happen, we need to understand how it’s going to get built, operated, and used by the end users” — a process that could be made more efficient by robots like Spot.
Collecting site data is mostly a manual process, one architects might be eager to outsource to Spot. Add artificial intelligence to the mix and we’ve eliminated even more time-consuming tasks. That will give designers more time exercise an exclusively human trait: creativity.
"Technology is a facilitator, but the real ideas come from humans,” Fereshetian says.
Trickier to navigate, however, is the emotional reaction professionals have to this technology. Spot’s office visit was met with a mix of awe and apprehension.
“Any technology historically comes with the positives and the negatives ... this brings a different layer, coming too close to reality,” she says.
Wait until they meet Boston Dynamics’ humanoid robot, Atlas.
