Man’s best friend just got a lot more futuristic with a new addition at Saskatchewan Polytechnic, and it’s expected to take on some big tasks that will help keep people safer.
The first robot dog to be used at a polytechnic school in the country was unveiled in Saskatoon on Tuesday.
The bark of this four-legged robot would be worse than the bite, since this dog doesn’t have any teeth, but what this pooch can do is way more impressive.
“Robots are making a large impact in our world in a lot of different ways,” Terry Peckham, the Director and research chair of the Digital Integration Centre of Excellence (DICE), told CTV News.
It’s called a quadruped and will be used by students for learning, but it could also be employed in sectors like agriculture and mining to help with safety.
“It can check out for safety in a newly constructed areas to make sure that it’s safe for people to enter prior to sending people in,” Peckham said.
Those areas could include high voltage zones. It also has big potential for Saskatchewan’s potash industry for tasks like scoping out danger zones or taking photos to assess safety.
“The mine walls in potash, collapse and so they want to know if we can predict when those mine walls will collapse and so having a high-resolution image of a mine wall will help us develop an AI that can better predict when those walls are going to collapse,” he says.
It’s nickname for now is Strider, but there may be a naming contest on campus to choose a more permanent name.
Computer systems technology graduate Brady Warford was honoured to be asked to be one of the leads on the quadruped.
“I was one of the people who took it out of the box the first time and I got to use the controller the first time,” he said.
He spends about eight hours a day working on this project, much of that is spent with Strider. Warford admits he’s getting attached.
“I’m doing some programing, adding automation to it, building sort of a knowledge base for our future projects. And just figuring out how to access some of these things, how to make it move,” he said.
The robot can be programmed to do many things but can also figure things out autonomously.
While it resembles a dog, complete with two tails that wag, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
“I might cry a little bit when I’m off this project. No, not actually, but, I’m going to miss it,” Warford said.
This robot has been at the school for about three months and has become part of the family, in a way. There’s even a crate for it to sleep in at night.
“I’m almost a little protective, you know, I’m the dog guy, apparently, in the office. So, I take that with pride.”
The cost was $200,000, but adding attachments like arms could make that more than double.
That price isn’t making anyone at Sask. Polytech roll over. Well, except for Strider — that’s one of his favourite tricks, along with walking up and down stairs.
