Lessons Learned from Letting the DroneDogs Out
From inspecting baggage at airports to detecting explosives in vehicles to warding off intruders, dogs have long been assisting security practitioners with their work.
Recently, however, some of the dogs in the field have looked a bit different. They run on batteries, move using mechanical legs, and have a body covered in cameras and sensors to feed information back to a human, typically in a security operations center, to initiate a response when needed.
Many of these robot dogs are built using the Boston Dynamics Spot platform, an autonomous quadruped that can climb stairs, navigate uneven terrain, carry up to 30.9 pounds of equipment, and operate in temperatures that range from -20 to 55 degrees Celsius (-4 to 131 degrees Fahrenheit).
“Spot, based on our evaluations, is the best quadruped on the market,” says Brent McLaughlin, co-founder and chief operations officer at Asylon Robotics. “The navigation and obstacle avoidance, the perception, basically the software that they’ve built around Spot is incredible.”
Building a Robot Dog
Asylon’s robot dog, the DroneDog system, is built using Spot as its base. It debuted in 2016 with features that include live video monitoring, infrared (thermal) vision, automated charging, teleoperation, and more. It also features 360-degree obstacle avoidance, which means the robot will not accidentally run into something.
Besides the technological base that Spot gave Asylon to work with, McLaughlin also says they were attracted to the Boston Dynamics product because they knew it could scale with their business need.
“As an engineer, as a technologist, I love tech, but I’m also a realist,” he explains. “Tech fails. And it needs constant upkeep and maintenance. We were looking for a partner that could also provide that, and Boston Dynamics has.”
In particular, McLaughlin cites Boston Dynamic’s support team and continuous research to better Spot’s electromechanical systems, including actuators, motors, and more.
“I’m happy to say that we have robots that have walked over 10,000 miles at this point—multiple robots that have walked over 10,000 miles at customer sites, not just in tests, and that’s incredible to see robots do that,” he explains. “They needed maintenance. They’ve had failures…but the system is still operating today and providing value for clients.”
As an engineer, as a technologist, I love tech, but I'm also a realist.
Asylon also looks at how it can continue to operate its systems more intelligently by analyzing the data that the DroneDog systems provide. This also provides high-quality information back to Boston Dynamics to continue to improve the engineering of the Spot robot design the DroneDog is built on parallel with its own internal testing.
Boston Dynamics “leverage us as field-deployed operational robots to supplement that testing,” McLaughlin says. “We’ve worked very closely together to find issues and to determine improvements and quality of life fixes. It just results in an overall better product for everybody, and everybody wins.”
The Dog in the Field
The DroneDog system launched in 2016, and warehousing and distribution company GXO Logistics, Inc., subsequently allowed Asylon to test the solution at one of its sites. An operator walked behind the robot, using a tablet to control it instead of relying on autonomous controls to see how the DroneDog would behave in an operational environment.
After a few months of using that approach, GXO ultimately went with the DroneDog solution—using two robots paired with an Asylon drone system—to conduct a perimeter patrol, including checks on main doors and bay doors on the warehouse, gates, and ingress points.
“We’ve learned to identify what looks suspicious and what doesn’t for that specific site,” McLaughlin adds. “We’ve gotten a little bit more familiar with some of the ground access hatches and things that could present different safety hazards if a hatch is removed and now there’s a big hole in the middle of this logistics yard.”
When the robot spots hazards like that, it sends a report, and the on-site security or operations team can remedy the issue.
In a press release, GXO said that it has used its robotic assets to conduct more than 12,000 patrols or first-responder missions since it deployed the solutions.
GXO has also used the systems to “investigate and clear alarms, as well as complete video-verified security audits, saving miles of walk time for team members,” according to the company. “This technology is detecting potential issues in real time while making the environment safer for team members and securing the customer’s products.”
The DroneDog system recently completed its 100,000th mission and continues to be deployed at GXO’s sites, McLaughlin says.
The company tends to use a similar approach when working with new clients. During the first 60 days that a robot is on site, McLaughlin and the team are meeting with clients to make sure it’s performing to their expectations and meeting their needs.
Sometimes this means incorporating a new capability into the DroneDog system, such as the ability to observe a gauge on machinery so a human does not have to walk over and assess it in the facility. Other times, it means having the system patrol parking lots for safety or check for additional safety issues.
“That’s great because it gets more buy-in from a variety of stakeholders at the client site and people start to really get value,” McLaughlin says. “Most of the time it’s a pretty easy ask to add on to a patrol. The robot’s already there. It’s already in the vicinity doing those things. It’s not that much more difficult to add some of this stuff.
Clients are also interested in using the DroneDog as a deterrence factor. The robot itself is not weaponized. Boston Dynamics has a license agreement that does not allow its systems to be used for that purpose. Humans, instead, monitor the video feeds from the DroneDog and then will initiate a security response if appropriate.
On 24 December 2023, for example, a DroneDog was patrolling at a utility yard in California. It went around the edge of a container and spotted a woman with bolt cutters who had cut through the perimeter fence and was attempting to enter.
The woman saw the robot and began yelling at it before crawling through the hole in the fence to throw rocks at the DroneDog.
“Thankfully, she wasn’t a good aim,” McLaughlin adds. “The robot survived that shot.”
The woman then came over to the DroneDog and attempted to push it over. But due to its design, the robot was able to steady itself—with its self-righting capabilities as a back-up. The woman then chased the robot around for a while, before attempting to steal some spools of copper cable.
Meanwhile, a human operator watching the DroneDog’s video feeds alerted on-site security to the intruder, and they began to respond. The woman ultimately fled the site, without the copper cable.
“At the end of the day, it was a good story,” McLaughlin says. “The robot wasn’t damaged. We prevented theft, saved our client probably on the order of $10,000 to $20,000, depending on how much spool was there.”
Along with its patrol capabilities, clients are also beginning to leverage systems like the DroneDog as part of their hazardous materials (HAZMAT) response procedures. McLaughlin says they began incorporating the ability to respond to these situations into the DroneDog’s systems at the end of 2023.
Asylon was looking for more ways to use the robot to keep people out of harm’s way, so it partnered with the company RedWave (which has since been acquired by 908 Devices) to participate in the U.S. Army’s Development Command (DEVCOM) exercise called Dragon Spear. The exercise is a chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear (CBRN) exercise where companies can demonstrate technologies and how they would be used in a CBRN environment. The partners also worked together to participate in the Chemical Biological Operational Analysis (CBOA), another CBRN event held by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency from Army DEVCOM.
After those experiences, McLaughlin says the company explored adding payload and sensors to the DroneDog to replicate the process that HAZMAT teams typically use humans for.
“Being able to utilize a robot there, to navigate those same environments incredibly well and carry, in Spot’s case, up to 30 pounds of different payloads, can help alleviate them and frees them up to go do other things,” McLaughlin adds. Public safety use cases have become a particular focus for Asylon recently, and the field is still evolving.
This use case scenario for the DroneDog was recently exercised when McLaughlin and the robot participated in efforts to secure the Republican National Convention (RNC) in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, during July 2024.
Using technology originally developed by RedWave, Asylon placed chemical and vapor gas sensors on the DroneDog that can be used to detect chemicals in the air. If there was an incident where hazardous materials were suspected to be involved, first responders could send the DroneDog in to gather information on the scene without risking harm to human personnel.
McLaughlin and the DroneDog were stationed at the All Hazards Center in Milwaukee with a variety of security and first responder personnel. They did not deploy into the field, “but should something happen, we can push the robot out and give situational awareness and context to the operators and first responders, so they know what they are walking in to, is there an actional threat, what equipment they need, and how to suit up to best protect their people,” McLaughlin says.
Today, the DroneDog system across Asylon’s client bases averages between 300 and 350 missions per day. These are being run fully remote from Asylon’s operations center just outside of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Logistics warehouses continue to be the largest client base that use the DroneDog system because it can be used for patrolling. Asylon’s largest customer has about 1 million guard hours on the budget, but it is facing about a 25 percent blackout—meaning they only have budget to staff 75 percent of their necessary guarding hours.
“They’re struggling to hire staff to train, and to retain staff to be fully secured,” McLaughlin says. “They’re not looking to technology necessarily to replace humans. They’re looking to backfill humans and fill that void.”
Automotive manufacturers and retailers have also been approaching Asylon with interest in the DroneDog system to better protect the high-end merchandise in their inventories.
“Catalytic converter theft has been on the rise for many years now; having a system that can patrol and deter that has been really powerful,” McLaughlin adds.
They're not looking to technology necessarily to replace humans. They're looking to backfill humans and fill that void.
They are also seeing interest from pharmaceutical research and storage facilities, as well as corporate campus environments. The latter use case requires some additional community engagement when bringing a robot onto the security team.
“You want people to feel safe but also not feel like they’re being spied on because that’s not what we’re doing,” McLaughlin says, adding that it’s critical to get buy-in from the staff so they feel like the robot is part of the team.
“I think being upfront and communicating what’s coming and what the goals are to the staff before it arrives is really powerful,” he adds. “Giving them notice, not surprising them is always a good thing.”
A lot of clients also hold naming competitions to name the DroneDog system that will be onsite at their location, and some host meet-and-greets so staff can learn how the robot will be used and have a chance to observe it.
“That’s something that we usually do in tandem with the security team, usually in the first week or two that the robot’s on site,” McLaughlin says. “We’ll set up in the cafeteria with a table and a sign that says who we are, what we are, and let people come up and ask questions, take pictures.”
Sometimes the team will get some wild questions, such as “Will the robot have lasers on it?” McLaughlin adds, but navigating those is part of the onboarding process.
“Being able to quell those fears a little bit, and, again, engage with them, give that human touch, goes a really long way,” he says.
Megan Gates is the editor-in-chief of Security Technology. Connect with her at [email protected] or on LinkedIn.
