[Dismas]

Boston Dynamics is selling commercial robots, used to unload cargo. No doubt Amazon will be laying some employees off.

Boston Dynamics has launched its second commercial robot. After debuting its four-legged robot dog, Spot, on the market in 2020 for $75,000, it's now showing off the commercial version of Stretch, a warehouse box-moving robot that is available for purchase.

Stretch arrived in prototype form in March 2021, and after a year of on-the-job trials and more development, it was refined into a commercial product. The purpose of the bot is still the same: it's a box mover. Stretch is a warehouse worker that is meant to quickly take over unloading trucks, depalletizing boxes, and building orders without any need to build additional infrastructure.

Box-moving arms are nothing new, but they are usually stationary, which means you have to bolt them to the floor in a specific spot and design your warehouse around the robot location. Stretch is mounted on a big, wheeled base, so it has more human-like flexibility in what it can do throughout the day. You can have Stretch drive right into a truck and do some box unloading in the morning and then move on to the order building later in the afternoon. The base is the same size as a pallet, so it can go just about anywhere in a warehouse.

Read More: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/04/...-sold-out/