'Mythbusters' host Adam Savage built a rickshaw pulled by a Boston Dynamics robot

Isobel Asher Hamilton

February 17, 2020 3:48 PM

Boston Dynamics, the robotics startup famous for its animal-like robots, started leasing its "Spot" robot last year.

Adam Savage Spot Boston Dynamics rickshaw

Former "Mythbusters" host Adam Savage got one for his "Tested" YouTube channel, and decided to build a bespoke rickshaw for it.
The experiment was an overall success, although Spot struggled taking the rickshaw up a slight hill.
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Boston Dynamics started leasing out its animal-like Spot robots in September, and they're already being modded for YouTube content.

Adam Savage, former "Mythbusters" host and YouTube creator, announced he'd got his hands on a Spot robot in January and would spend the year experimenting with it. In a video posted on Thursday, Savage decided to give the robot its first modification.

Savage built what he described as a "steampunk-Victorian funeral" rickshaw over the course of five days, and spends the bulk of the video designing a harness for Spot to pull the rickshaw along. To build the harness he collaborated with Seth Davis, Boston Dynamics' head of field application.

Savage admitted at the top of the video that it had been his ambition to ride Spot, but the robot isn't equipped to handle a payload that heavy.

At the end of the video Savage takes Spot for a test ride, and the robot shows impressive alacrity although it does struggle with a slight uphill incline.

You can watch Savage building his robot-pulled rickshaw below:

September was the first time Boston Dynamics released its robots to be used in the outside world, and earlier this month Norwegian oil and gas company Aker BP announced it was deploying a Spot robot to patrol one of its oil rigs .

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