TVA’s robot dog gives Golden Triangle students a look at the future of robotics and engineering

LOWNDES COUNTY, Miss. (WCBI) – Tuesday morning, the Tennessee Valley Authority put on a demonstration featuring one of its new Boston Dynamics robot dogs for students at East Mississippi Community College.

EMCC joined Heritage Academy and Caledonia as the latest school to get a visit from “Spot.”

Spot is one of the six state-of-the-art robot dogs TVA bought in 2021. TVA says the goal of these demonstrations is to inspire the next generation of mechanical engineers and computer scientists by giving students an up-close look at the latest in robotics and machine learning.

“It’s always been that, ‘Gasp,’ says Cody Smith, the data specialist trained to operate Spot. “You always hear that shock and awe (when they bring the robot out).”

Equipped with artificial intelligence, a thermal imaging camera and a LIDAR system, Spot can travel a predetermined route on his own, navigating around obstacles, even going up and down stairs.

“We could have Spot sit at the plant and then someone wakes him up, he goes and looks, he does the inspection and then no one has to go to the plant unless there’s a problem,” Smith says, describing one of the uses for the robot.

But the robot’s primary job is to operate in hazardous environments.

“If someone were down in a plant, like say they’re down near some ammonia; ammonia is a toxic gas we can’t handle,” Smith explained. “But you could at least send in Spot to go look.”

Spot could also go in to look for potential steam leaks.

“Superheated steam would cut a person in half if they walked through it,” Smith says.

They could also send the robot to check on a breaker.

“If a breaker arcs, if it arcs and there is a person around, it’s going to change somebody’s life,” Smith says. “If it doesn’t kill them, it’s going to severely injure them.”

TVA says it is still at the testing and evaluation stage with the robot dogs and hasn’t been able to put them in daily use yet. In the meantime, the robots are being used to inspire students and get them interested in fields like technology, robotics and engineering.

“We wanted to share with students an area technology that’s available, with an emphasis on education,” says Derek Dunaway, a TVA plant manager in Caledonia.

That includes students like John Tompkins, a junior in high school who is taking IT classes at EMCC.

“I noticed (Spot) running a learning algorithm which learns through mistakes like that,” Tompkins says. “Which, part of IT is programs like that, a good amount of its programming as well.”

“Regardless of whether they’re working at TVA or not, we need mechanical engineers, we need electrical engineers, we need computer scientists. We need all these skilled professionals,” Smith says. “They’re going to impact the valley in a positive way.”

Smith says the goal is to eventually have enough of the Boston Dynamics robots to have one stationed at every TVA plant, or at least in every major TVA region.