Verizon’s solution for getting network connection to hard-to-reach and potentially inhospitable destinations? A team of robotic dogs from Ghost Robotics wielded by the company’s Frontline response division. I went up-close with one of the robo-hounds at Verizon’s secretive emergency preparedness cave outside Kansas City to see how the four-legged Fido-bot could be the future of disaster relief.
Similar to the ‘Spot’ robo-dog from Boston Dynamics, Verizon’s yet-to-be-named assets are quadrupedal robots with a degree of agility wheeled machines lack. They can remotely traverse tough terrains, such as a wildfire-ridden mountain, with modifications that might come in handy in times of trouble. For Verizon, these modifications mostly include networking hardware.
