Author: Yu Hang He, Email: hey6@unlv.nevada.edu
Date Last Modified: 09/23/2019

During the safety training of Spot, I met with Ozgur Dandin, a construction safety specialist. Ozgur is very familiar with various safety procedures and regulations within the Gigafactory. We invited him to the training session to have someone from the Environmental Health and Safety department to inspect the safety standard of Spot and approve its usage inside the factory. In the afternoon, both Ozgur and I have the opportunity to control and drive the Spot around the factory. Again, it attracted a lot of attentions and I am sure that Tesla's productivity dropped on that day. In addition, I met with Kevin Garell, Michael Perry, and Chris Lebrun from Boston Dynamics again.

I loved the opportunity to demonstrate Spot and explain to the audience what Spot is capable of. During Thursday's training session, there were many people who were curious about Spot and asked me various questions about it. Perhaps it is a little bit self-indulgent, but it gave me great pleasure to be able explain Spot's capabilities. I am very proud that I have the opportunity to work with such amazing piece of equipment. Since our team is located with the engineering and construction group, there are many engineers who are fascinated by Spot and asked questions that I do have answers to. Hopefully, I will learn more about Spot and will be able to answer these questions in the future.

I spent the most of this week working on the Desktop GUI for Spot. I planned to implement every function that was made available in their keyboard-controlled console program. I have no prior experience in creating graphical user interface, so the process took longer than I expected. At the same time, I have to learn how to work with Boston Dynamic's APIs. In addition to working on GUI, the actual robot arrived this Thursday. On this Thursday, we went through the training session with personnel from Boston Dynamics. Specifically, we focused on the safety aspects of Spots, such as what safety features are required to have Spot actually running on the Tesla's factory floor. The Spot attracted a lot of attention on the factory floor. Unfortunately, someone called the security team on Spot and claimed it as “unauthorized military type weapon.” We did not get into trouble since we have all the permissions. But, it made me wonder what would be the reactions of factory workers once we have them actually operating inside the production area.

The plan for now is to finish my graphical interface for Spot. Since we have the actual robot now, I can start testing the software and debug it properly. In addition to the software, I want to get the bill of material for the mount and roll-cage to approved and ordered so that I can actually start building it.