Boston Dynamics has announced new features in its automation software platform, Orbit, aimed at expanding the scope and utility of robotic inspections in industrial environments. The latest update integrates advanced AI tools to support facility-wide monitoring, going beyond traditional asset reliability checks to include safety hazards, visual indicators, and general site conditions.
The company’s quadruped robot, Spot, now operates with enhanced inspection capabilities, including autonomous patrols and image capture at designated locations. These images are analyzed using vision-language prompts within Orbit, enabling the identification of safety issues, equipment degradation, and operational anomalies. The AI-powered system delivers insights in formats ranging from binary responses to numeric and descriptive outputs.
One new feature, Site View, creates a visual history of facilities through 360-degree imagery captured by Spot. This functionality allows users to review conditions remotely, reducing the need for on-site presence and facilitating historical analysis. Existing Spot missions can be converted into Site View missions, supporting streamlined facility digitalization.
Orbit’s enterprise-level tools now include centralized dashboards, allowing organizations to oversee robot operations, fleet health, and site performance across multiple locations. Additional updates address user management and data privacy, including customizable user permissions and an automated face-blurring feature for images captured via Spot’s cameras.
Software maintenance is supported through over-the-air updates, and users can now deploy robot and payload software bundles to multiple units simultaneously. For those requiring more infrastructure control, Orbit is also available as a virtual machine for on-premise deployment.
Integration capabilities have been extended with a low-code option for work order automation, currently in beta. Orbit’s thermal inspection tools also now include dynamic thresholding, applying statistical analysis to flag temperature anomalies without manual range setting.
Photo: Boston Dynamics
