#HTE

Boston Dynamics’ New Stretch Robot

Boston Dynamics’ latest prototype is something like an industrial factory robot on a mobile base. Called Stretch, it consists of a large multi-jointed arm, a suction-based gripper and a “perception mast” all standing on a rolling box with the same footprint as a shipping pallet.

The roving robot is intended to replace human workers who load and unload boxes in warehouses or from shipping containers:

It’s almost a miracle that this thing didn’t come out before COVID; I’m sure executives would’ve preferred to fire droves of potentially virus-carrying workers and plop down a couple of these instead. The future of blue collar labor looks grim indeed.