Balto, named for the legendary husky and lead sled dog who ran the last leg of a more than 500-mile dog sled relay to deliver diphtheria antitoxin to Nome, Alaska, in 1925, will be the greeter in Michigan Tech's new robotics lab, coming to Rekhi Hall.
As plans for the facility come together, Balto has been paying visits to students around campus. Michael Walker, assistant professor of computer science, leads the demonstrations.
Walker said choosing the Balto moniker came easily. "Being named after a Husky is of course fitting, while also capturing some of Michigan Tech's essence of resilience and dedication that's embodied by students and faculty up here in Houghton," he said.
Walker, whose research focuses on human-robot interactions, said the state-of-the-art Boston Dynamics quadruped and manipulation platform Spot — now known as Balto — is well-suited to his special interest in improving human-robot teaming in real-world scenarios with immersive interfaces, including mixed or virtual reality.
"To enable exploration of this research space, the need rose for a robust robotic platform capable of working in complex indoor and outdoor environments," Walker said. "The goal is to not just explore and navigate these environments but be able to interact physically with them."
Balto's meet-and-greets serve an important introductory purpose.
"The demos showcase the capabilities of the cutting-edge industrial robot assets available to students at Tech while also bringing awareness to the MTU community about the activity, opportunities and growth within the Computer Science Department in terms of robotics research and courses," said Walker.
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