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Comment by bogwog | Hacker News Reader

Could a grown man ride it like a horse? This is such a cool, unknown, yet obvious technology but I have no idea what I would use it for. Rescuing people from volcanos? Bringing you a beer? Robot dog races or fights? This is obviously designed for industrial and rescue uses, but I think it could be most successful in the entertainment industry (don't know how ethical that would be though)

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As others have said you can't directly ride it (the max payload is too low), but Adam Savage did manage to hook it up to a rickshaw and ride it that way: https://youtu.be/zyaocKS3sfg?t=1358

Not as a horse, but a rickshaw.

"Adam Savage's Spot Robot Rickshaw Carriage!"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zyaocKS3sfg

PAYLOADS

Max weight = 14 kg total (30.9 lbs) Mounting area = 850 mm (L) x 240 mm (W) x 270m m (H) Mounting interface = M5 T-slot rails Connector = DB25 (2 ports) Power supply = Unregulated DC 35-58.8V, 150W per port Integration = Available software API and hardware interface control documentation

You'd need 4 -5 of them holding up a palanquin that you sit on.

sibling comment said max weight is 30.9 lbs per SPOT. So go on a diet, do some ascetic yoga, get down to 150 lbs or so. and then get 4-5 of them holding up your royal vessel.

Seems like it'd be more effective to integrate a single beefier spot into the palanquin itself: https://steven-universe.fandom.com/wiki/Diamond_Palanquins

No: "Max weight = 14 kg total (30.9 lbs)"

https://shop.bostondynamics.com/DefaultStore/spot?cclcl=en_U...

However, a very small child can ride it. :)

I'd be worried about pinch points or babby stickin fingers into sensors

Not such a small child; my 4yo is about that!

Some comments here show the max payload is too low. But I've had the same thoughts, so what does it take to scale Spot to the size/max payload of a horse?

I guess more importantly, when an AT-AT [0] sized one?

[0] https://www.starwars.com/databank/at-at-walker/

Like BigDog? Not quite horse capacity, but still rideable in terms of load, although I don't know if it would screw up the balance

They had a horse sized payload with the Legged Squad Support system.[1] It worked, but the Marines tried it and it wasn't useful enough. They ended up going with a small ATV for supplies.

(Too noisy, too. A subcontractor was supposed to produce a small, quiet Diesel to power a generator and hydraulic pump, but that never happened. Probably because a small, quiet Diesel is hard. The US military runs on one fuel, JP-8, which works in both aircraft and Diesel engines, so to deploy this, it had to run on JP-8)

[1] https://youtu.be/LIaXEMOhihw

Get 4 or 6 of these, hook it up to a sled with wheels, and you have your own robotic dogsledding team.

They did that with some Big Dogs, there's a video.

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