00:04This is Spot, the robot dog from Boston Dynamics.
00:08And while you've likely seen him dancing with his robot buddies,
00:11the small yellow automaton has finally been given a mission worth his engineering.
00:15Spot is likely going to Mars, and he's now been given artificial intelligence
00:19and is currently training for that mission in Earth's caves.
00:22These are the caverns of the Lava Beds National Memorial Park in Northern California.
00:26Spot is autonomously exploring using AI that was developed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab.
00:31And in association with its human counterparts,
00:33it can thoroughly explore these underground cave systems at record speeds,
00:37searching hundreds of meters of cave system and 3D mapping the structure in only about an hour.
00:42To maintain communication, Spot drops nodes as it goes deeper and deeper into the cave.
00:46But once even those are out of range, the AI takes over completely,
00:49and the robot continues to execute its mission without further prompting.
00:53And according to NASA, multiple spots can communicate and work together as a team,
00:57examining information from the world and completing their tasks together,
01:00and possibly someday doing it on Mars.
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