The famous robot dog is now the guardian of Pompeii

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spot en pompeya.jpg
spot en pompeya.jpg

Spot has a new job, to be a guardian in one of the most archaeological points of interest on planet Earth.

A unit of the famous Boston Dynamics robot dog has been acquired to protect the ruins from looters, but will also carry out scientific work by making 3D maps.

The Roman settlement, buried by lava in the year 79, continues to offer surprises to researchers, in fact in 2018 new artifacts were discovered that were still buried, and that attracted the attention of looters from around the world.

It is an area of ​​400,000 square meters, so it is practically impossible to monitor everything constantly. There are looters who dig tunnels to retrieve items and sell them on the black market, so Spot’s help will be very important for 24/7 surveillance.

Thanks to its movements and its size, it will be able to navigate through the ruins without problem, get into tunnels and access narrow areas with little surveillance.

The surveillance will be carried out with the cameras, which will also be used to scan the environment in 3D, which will help verify the evolution of the ruins and check if any area is being preserved worse than another. Small cracks or wall movements may appear somewhere, and the 3D model made by spot will help to identify them.

The idea is even to be able to build a virtual replica of Pompeii with a high level of detail, which will help more researchers join the work.

You can see more images and read more information about the project at pompeiisites.org.

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