第2942期:Robot dogs are working at car factories

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.

这是机器人版的人类最好的朋友。波士顿动力公司的这款四足机器人正在密歇根州的福特汽车公司投入使用。

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.

我们当时正在想办法进入设施内的狭窄区域， 集思广益之后想到了Fluffy。

We could mount a 360 high resolution camera onto it as well as a laser scanner.

我们也可以在上面安装一台360度高分辨率相机以及一台激光扫描仪。

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

Fluffy与名为Scatter的自动机器人合作，帮助创建工厂车间的三维地图。

They autonomously go through the plant and then stop, scan, move, stop, scan to waypoints like a GPS.

它们像GPS一样自主穿过工厂，然后停下、扫描、移动、停下、扫描，依次到达各个路径点。

Fluffy goes where Scatter can't helping create a more complete map of the space,

Fluffy可以去到Scatter无法到达的地方，从而帮助绘制更完整的空间地图，

which in turn helps engineers as they retool floor plans for production of new car models.

这反过来又能协助工程师重新规划生产新车型的车间布局。

In some of our final assembly areas, the facility is changing monthly.

在我们的一些总装区域，工厂设施每月更换一次。

The robotic dog can be customized with a variety of sensors for different jobs.

这只机器狗可以配备多种传感器以适应不同的工作任务。

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.

化工生产中，你需要气体传感器来检测环境中是否存在泄漏，以便更快地修复泄漏问题。

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.

其他客户需要热成像仪，这样他们就能观察一些工业设备的运行情况，并判断出哪个部位过热了，可能会引发问题。

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

在危险环境中确保工人安全是使用这款机器人的主要优势之一，收集更多类型的数据也是如此。

We're creating all of these systems to interpret and collect and analyze big data.

我们正在创建所有这些系统来解释、收集和分析大数据。

The problem is that we can only get a very narrow set of data into those systems.

问题是我们只能将非常有限的一组数据输入到这些系统中。

Unlike a fixed sensor, this robot can collect data wherever it's programmed to go.

与固定传感器不同，这台机器人可以按照程序设定前往任何地点采集数据。

Boston Dynamics is currently leasing the technology so companies can find ways to use it.

波士顿动力公司目前正在出租这项技术，以便各公司能找到使用它的方法。

For some this robot dog could turn out to be a very good boy indeed.

对一些人来说，这只机器狗可能会成为一个非常棒的朋友。