Boston Dynamics has upgraded the Orbit software that runs its Spot quadruped robots so that Spot can carry out autonomous, AI-analyzed inspections across a whole facility, covering safety hazards and site conditions as well as individual assets, according to a November 2025 report. Cargill already uses Spot and Orbit for visual inspections and machinery checks in its "Plant of the Future" programs and reports catching issues early that would otherwise have been missed.
Industrial inspections have mostly relied on manual visual checks, which are slow and inconsistent and leave little usable history.
Spot now patrols a facility autonomously and photographs designated points of interest. Orbit analyzes each image with vision-language prompts and returns answers ranging from yes/no to numeric readings, percentages and descriptive text, flagging spills, missing fire extinguishers, equipment wear and pallet status, and users can ask natural-language questions about the findings. Spot can be fitted with thermal cameras to find hot spots in machinery, tanks and electrical conductors, with Orbit applying dynamic statistical thresholds to flag abnormal temperatures; acoustic imagers detect air leaks, gas leaks and unusual vibrations; and a computer vision add-on reads analog gauges and alerts on abnormal values. Orbit 5.0 adds Site View, which builds a 360-degree visual history of a site for remote review, plus multi-site dashboards for fleet health, custom permissions, automatic face blurring, over-the-air software updates, an on-premises virtual machine option and low-code work-order integration in beta.
Boston Dynamics has also partnered with IFS so that data collected by Spot feeds IFS.ai, which can trigger actions such as preventive maintenance scheduling or anomaly alerts, targeting labor and skills shortages in manufacturing, energy, utilities and mining.
Details
- City
- Waltham
- Organization
- Boston Dynamics
- Continent
- North America
- Country
- United States