I directed the robot up a set of narrow stairs, and Spot walked up them while keeping itself away from the sides.

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Today the company is announcing Spot Enterprise, a new version of the robot that features a charging stand to top up its batteries without any human interaction.

The robotics company is also announcing Scout, a new browser-based control system that offers a streamlined interface for piloting Spot over the internet, as well as a new robotic arm to help the robot grasp, lift, carry, place, and drag a wide variety of objects.

The way Boston Dynamics describes it, todays announcements are a response to the kinds of features Spots early buyers have been requesting.

The company says there are currently over 400 Spot robots out in the world.

That way, the person who is attached to follow up on an alarm going off or a routine inspection can just dial into a robot, stand up, and go take a look around.

For now, it mostly turns Spot into an expensive telepresence robot.

Boston Dynamics tells me its new arm doesnt work with its web-based software yet, making Spot better suited to inspecting and photographing an environment rather than physically interacting with it.

Once the robotic arm is integrated with Scout, however, the robot should be able to do things like operate valves, pull levers, or turn handles, while its operator sits hundreds or even thousands of miles away.

Although the new robot also features other upgrades like a more powerful CPU designed to run more advanced autonomy algorithms in the future, its self-charging capabilities are the major new feature.

When combined with Scout, the hope is that businesses can use Spot as an alternative to dispatching personnel to remote sites.

Once its close enough to the charging station to see its marker, Spot is able to position and lower itself so it comes into contact with the charging connectors on the stand.

The stand also includes a hardwired internet connection, which makes it quicker and more reliable to upload sensor data gathered by Spot during its travels.

Jackowski estimates that controlling Spot only needs a couple of megabits of internet bandwidth (for reference, Netflix currently recommends 3Mbps of bandwidth for streaming in SD).

This low bandwidth requirement is achieved by doing as much of the heavy processing onsite as possible, so Spot isnt reliant on an internet connection to get around.

The system relies on a Boston Dynamics server installed on the same local network as the robot to process and compress Spots data before sending it over the internet.

Companies like Rocos and Formant have offered third-party control tools, and Boston Dynamics itself has also demonstrated software that it said would let potential Spot customers remotely test drive the robot around an assault course in its headquarters.

But Scout is the companys first streamlined, web-based software for controlling its robots, and customers will be able to use it to control their robots regardless of where they may be in the world.

I could either control the robot like an action video game with my WASD keys (Jackowski tells me a game controller paired to my PC would have also worked), or via a point-and-click control scheme thats not unlike what youd find in a classic adventure game.

There was a significant delay between me pressing a button and the robot responding, and Id probably have been constantly crashing into things were it not for Spots built-in obstacle avoidance technology.

It felt like playing a game with assists like invisible walls turned on.

Id click a patch of ground behind a traffic cone, and Spot would walk to it while avoiding the cone.

Driver Gamepad M Tech Admission