car factories They have ceased to be analog facilities to house the latest technologies to promote vehicle production. There has been a lot of evolution in points such as energy efficiency, but also in the optimization of resources or the speed of assembly. Currently, most work like clockwork and are capable of creating a car practically from scratch in just minutes. Although it is also important that there is control and now we have been surprised by the incorporation of autonomous robot dogs for that task.
BMW has incorporated SpOTTO, a curious robotic animal, to its staff at the Hams Hall factory (United Kingdom). This plant is mainly responsible for the production of gasoline engines with the brand's TwinPower Turbo technology and will now have a higher level of safety thanks to the four-legged robot. It serves as maintenance support and controls that the production processes are carried out correctly. To do this, it has state-of-the-art visual, thermal and acoustic sensors.
SpOTTO goes collecting all kinds of valuable data during his rounds around the factory and also supervises facility maintenance. It works on three levels to be able to capture data, interpret it and know if something is not correct. For example, you can monitor the temperature of a device and recognize if it is too hot. Also identify leaks in compressed air lines in order to reduce energy consumption. Once maintenance personnel are informed, the problem can be fixed quickly.
This is not the first time we have seen this autonomous robot dog, as it is the creation of Boston Dynamics which has already been present in other programs. In this case, BMW has named it SpOTTO because the name of the robot (Spot) is combined with that of Gustav Ott, one of the founders of BMW. In turn, this character was the son of Nicolaus Otto, inventor of the four-stroke internal combustion engine. Later, the robot could be used for other tasks in the Technical Area such as reading analog operational controls or carrying out complex sequences of movements.
