Please note: This is a Sole Source Notification. Proposed Sole Source Supplier: Boston Dynamics Sole Source Justification: The Boston Dynamics Spot robot is a unique piece of engineering technology. Its appearance is that of a dog with an arm on top and it is equipped with a variety of sensors. The ECE department is planning to use it for capstone projects, lower class demonstration, recruiting, data collection, and A.I. training. This is a relatively new field and Boston Dynamics is a leader in the field. Not only do we get great name recognition (for program recruiting) from the brand but we get a variety of sensors that have been tried and tested over and over in production. Additionally we can attach technology such as the Nvidia AGX Orin, allowing for AI compute needs on projects. Chinese-based companies can provide somewhat similar solutions, however their robots are much smaller, did not contain any autonomus functionality, were completely radio controlled, and had no option for AI autonomy development.
