Boston Dynamics' Spot robot embarks on its latest thrilling adventure: Insurance!

Boston Dynamics' creepy robot dog Spot has found another new employer for its unique skillset. Having previously found work checking out nuclear power plants, probing suspect packages, maintaining social distancing rules during the pandemic and – briefly – working as a police dog in New York before being unceremoniously fired …

[Chris G]

Working in a post disaster scenario may require better than IP54 described as 'rain proof' in the video but more like rain resistant.

Why do so many articles here and in other journals continue to bandy the Three Laws constantly when there are no autonomous robots around and even less robots that could be considered self aware or sentient?

Even in the I Robot series Asimov constantly questioned the laws and used them more as a literary device than asserting they could be genuinely useful. Hint, they're not.

[DS999]

Needs to be pretty much waterproof

In a flood, storm damage or fire (firefighting water) situation, the odds of stepping/slipping into a "puddle" that's beyond the robot's "shoulders" is high enough that IP54 is not close to good enough.

Being dust/smoke proof is going to come in pretty damn handy as well if they want it to inspect buildings damaged by earthquakes or fire/smoke damaged buildings.

[Sgt_Oddball]

Re: Needs to be pretty much waterproof

So what you're saying is... That the insurance robots will need their own insurance? Would the same insurance companies cover that or would there be a need for a second insurance company that deals with them?

And then would they need....

I'll stop. Down this path insurance indemnities lie.

[Cuddles]

Indeed, it seems most people who mention I, Robot or the three laws haven't actually read Asimov's work themselves. The entire point of those stories was exploring various ways in which the laws didn't actually work, or at the very least how they could be exploited. And the conclusion from his later robot books was that if the three laws actually were perfect, it would be a terrible thing for humanity as a whole. For those needing a more recent example, the humans in Wall-E are pretty much a direct copy and paste of Asimov's robot-reliant Spacers.

[Fruit and Nutcase]

Stinger

equipped with a frankly terrifying extendable robot arm attachment

Reminds me of the extendable stinger on the Triffids in the 1981 BBC TV adaptation

[Ian Johnston]

Seems like a perfect example of "a solution in search of a problem".