Testing the Field Capabilities of the Unitree Go-1

Promotional videos are great, but what’s the true deal taking a robotic dog to the sphere?

I’m spending the Summer with my son Arthur at Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory (RMBL) due to a fellowship from the Rady School of Computer Science and Engineering, a partner of the University of Colorado. Together with us, we brought a Unitree Go-1 from the Collaborative AI and Robotics Lab at CU Boulder. RMBL scientists usually are not only biologists, but many have grow to be drone operators, sensor engineers and data scientists. Our goal is to seek out out what a commodity robotic dog can add to their set of tools, what it may well actually accomplish in the sphere, and what fundamental research in robotics is required to enable them.

Listed here are our key findings from a primary deployment:

1. The Unitree Go-1 is in a position to navigate surprisingly rugged terrain.
2. The robot does fail. Its legs can entangle with the stems of forbs and shrubs and the robot can easily slip even on flat (!) terrain.
3. If the robot fails, it often cannot get well by itself, but must be manually disentangled and rebooted.
4. The robot itself is totally not rugged and susceptive to dust and morning dew, requiring additional engineering…