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[00:00.43] It's the robotic version of man's best friend. The four-legged robot from Boston Dynamics is being put to work at Ford Motor Company in Michigan.

[00:09.20] We were looking at a way to get into tight spots within our facilities, and spot who we nicknamed Fluffy came up as a brainstorming idea.

[00:19.57] We could mount a 360 high resolution camera onto it as well as a laser scanner.

[00:25.41] Fluffy works with an autonomous robot named Scatter to help create a 3D map of the factory floor.

[00:31.79] They autonomously go through the plant and then stop, scan, move, stop, scan to waypoints like a GPS.

[00:40.55] Fluffy goes where Scatter can't helping create a more complete map of the space,

[00:44.80] which in turn helps engineers as they retool floor plans for production of new car models.

[00:50.15] In some of our final assembly areas, the facility is changing monthly.

[00:54.93] The robotic dog can be customized with a variety of sensors for different jobs.

[00:59.44] Chemical manufacturing, you want a gas sensor to see if there's a leakage in the environment, so that you can fix the leak faster.

[01:08.22] Other customers need a thermal camera, so that they can look at the performance of some of their industrial equipment and say, oh that is overheating and that could potentially cause a problem.

[01:18.30] Ensuring worker safety in dangerous environments is one of the main benefits of using this robot. So is collecting more kinds of data.

[01:26.01] We're creating all of these systems to interpret and collect and analyze big data.

[01:32.38] The problem is that we can only get a very narrow set of data into those systems.

[01:38.22] Unlike a fixed sensor, this robot can collect data wherever it's programmed to go.

[01:43.00] Boston Dynamics is currently leasing the technology so companies can find ways to use it.

[01:47.53] For some this robot dog could turn out to be a very good boy indeed.