A pop-up “robot lab,” designed by the Cambridge-based Robotics and AI Institute, opened at the CambridgeSide shopping mall this summer. Scott Kirsner | MassLive
Marc Raibert is one of the world’s most famous robot builders. Videos of the dog-like Spot robot he developed at Boston Dynamics, or the humanoid Atlas robot dancing to “Do You Love Me?”, have racked up hundreds of millions of views on YouTube.
And in June, he decided to open up a store at the CambridgeSide mall, near Kendall Square. It’s right across from the mall’s revamped food court — sorry, food “hall” — and it may only be there through the end of August.
What is Raibert doing with this pop-up shop that doesn’t sell any products?
Raibert says he wants to give people some actual exposure to what robots can do — separate from the way Hollywood or news stories may portray them: “I think it’s a good thing for people to see the bright side,” he says, rather than worry about robots running amok, à la “Westworld,” “Black Mirror,” or “I, Robot.”
Raibert was the founder of Boston Dynamics in 1992, the Waltham company that makes Spot and other robots. These days, he’s the executive director of the Robotics and AI Institute (RAI) in Cambridge. It’s a research and development lab, bankrolled to the tune of $400 million by the South Korean carmaker Hyundai. (Hyundai acquired Boston Dynamics in 2021.)
It’s RAI’s brand that appears on the windows of the mall location, dubbed the “Robot Lab.” (No sign of Hyundai or Boston Dynamics.) Inside, you can do a few different things: drive a Spot robot around a simulated apartment; see some of Raibert’s earliest walking robots from the 1980s or a full-sized Atlas robot; or catch a robot dance performance. There’s also an iPad with a survey to gather data about people’s perceptions about robots.
Despite minimal promotion of the lab, aside from some pretty low-key signage at the mall, a staffer told me that they’ve been getting about 100 visitors a day.
You won’t see a $75,000 Spot robot for sale, or even a job application for RAI at the CambridgeSide location. But Raibert says another part of the mission is to inspire kids to consider a career in robotics, science or engineering.
Raibert said, “People come up to me all the time who say, ‘When I was in grade school, I watched a YouTube video [of yours], and now I’m in college, and I want to be a robotic scientist.’ So that’s, that’s the long scale of recruiting, right?”
While the robot lab’s lease ends in August, Raibert said that it could eventually lead to “something on a grander scale,” like a permanent location somewhere else, or a traveling robot show.
“When I was at Boston Dynamics, I started the dancing stuff,” he said. “We did the ‘Do You Love Me’ thing, and that was pretty well-constrained. …There weren’t people dancing with the robots, but I can imagine a show that had people interact with robots, where the robots are actually listening to the music, not just synced to the music, and maybe observing the other dancers. It would be fun to take an act like that on the road someday.”
Sounds like Raibert’s pop-up shop could potentially spawn a traveling dance troupe. If so, do we call it the Bots-ton Ballet?
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