A slim cousin to larger bots from Boston Dynamics, the Spot Mini can steer around obstacles, walk up stairs and even gently unload wine glasses from your dishwasher, an incredible feat of precision and delicacy (not to mention neat at parties).

We always see gifs of clumsy robots breaking things, not knowing their own strength, but this little guy is a big step forward in safety and capability. This is incredibly important if machines of this type are designed to become part of our daily lives.

Spot’s backers ask you to “think of how delicate a robot will have to be in the future. For example, to give an older person who is very frail a shower. How do you carefully lift them, position them, make sure they’re safe in order to give them a shower and then dry them off, help them with their clothes? That’s a pretty sophisticated machine and it requires a bit of machine learning to get to that point.”

Boston Dynamics is currently owned by Google, but Toyota has its eye on the company. Whether the search giant or car company will get these into ordinary homes anytime soon remains to be seen, but if they do make consumer models, buyers can be sure at least this is one dog that can walk itself.

The post Spot Mini: Dog-Sized Robot Runs, Climbs, Does Chores & More first appeared on Gajitz.

Parents and people with poor hand-eye coordination know very well the worst problem with ordinary trash cans: they require the trash to be taken to them. A Japanese inventor known as FRP invented what he calls the “Smart Trashbox,” a waste basket that senses where your trash has been thrown and then positions itself under the flying piece of garbage to safely catch it.

Not surprisingly, the device uses a Kinect sensor to “see” and track the trash. The sensor predicts where the trash will land and then instantly directs the wheeled trash can to position itself in that spot. The tossed garbage lands in the can and your pad stays a little neater. FRP is working on improving the can’s accuracy, and he may eventually license the idea for commercial production…which means that eventually, we could all forget about the hassle of getting up and walking over to the trash can.

The post Robotic Trash Can Rolls Around To Catch Your Flying Filth first appeared on Gajitz.