[VIDEO] Spot Joins OTTO AMRs on Test Floor With ROS Integration

We recently had the opportunity to partner with the other half of the Clearpath team, OTTO Motors, to combine our separate areas of expertise into a dynamic real-world application using Boston Dynamics‘ Spot.

At the end of last year, we released a ROS software package for Spot which allows researchers to take full advantage of ROS capabilities out-of-the-box and leverage widely available open-source libraries and tools with Spot. With our ROS driver, users can easily unlock the ability to control Spot and access all the onboard sensing data streams, including odometry, images, and point clouds from each of the five on-board stereo cameras, plus data from any additional payloads they choose to integrate.

OTTO Motors, on the other hand, is well known for their flexible and intelligent autonomous mobile robots for materials handling (such as OTTO 100, OTTO 750, and OTTO 1500). They are also the minds behind the world’s most powerful AMR fleet management software: OTTO® Fleet Manager. This powerful tool can handle everything from traffic control, job supervision, to robot management, facility integration, and more.

OTTO Motors AMR Fleet Management Software

Putting the Spot ROS Driver to the test

The team at OTTO Motors thought it would be a compelling test case to see just how easy it would be to integrate Spot – using the ROS driver –  into their test fleet. In doing so they could also test the robustness of their autonomy and fleet manager software running on a completely new platform. Watch James Servos – autonomy engineering manager at OTTO Motors- recount their experience integrating Spot into the OTTO Motor’s test fleet and see Spot mingle with a fleet of OTTOs.

Check out the full video below:

To learn more visit the SPOT ROS Package page.