Here comes a beautiful news at the Pompeii excavations: the prestigious archaeological site will come monitored day and night by a very special guardian, namely a robot dog. His name is Spot.
It is a robot from Boston Dynamics deputy to guard the ruins and the finds and also to plan safety interventions.
Our robot dog is already in service and for the moment his will be a trial period during which he will support the Italian authorities who must protect the site.
How Spot, the guardian robot dog works
Spot mounts one 360 degree surveillance camera and that collects and records data useful for planning any interventions. The main purpose of this robot is to improve the surveillance service existing and the quality of monitoring.
In addition, it is also used for analyze even better the areas where excavations are taking place so as to deepen their knowledge and the progress of the work. In this way, it is easier to manage the safety of the excavation areas where there are sites in the recovery phase.
Spot is also joined by a flying laser scanner, Leica BLK2FLY, which can do 3D scans of the sites, completely autonomous from the robot dog.
Finally, Spot can also move easily inside underground tunnels, even narrow and small. For example, it will be tested in those clandestine tunnels that were dug by grave robbers who for many years have used them to get into the excavations for steal artifacts and resell them. These tunnels are often unsafe and represent one security threat, so you need to remedy it. The intervention of a robot will allow you to move quickly and with less risk.
Boston Dynamics robot dogs around the world
These technology products have also been used in other places, such as in Massachusetts. Here, the police he used them to carry out patrol operations and inspect very dangerous contexts.
Also 'French army used them in 2021 for their own special operations, while a competitor called Ghost Robotics fielded them for patrol the border between Mexico and the United States.
The project to make Pompeii smart
Spot is part of a larger project, Called Smart Pompeii, aimed at making the Pompeii site even more technological and making it more usable and manageable through modern technologies.
The first steps were taken in 2013 when theUnesco feared the hypothesis of including archaeological excavations in a list of endangered sites, so we ran for cover. For example, drones have been used for some years to monitor the site from above. Other initiatives include:
- Civitates, a project carried out by the local community, social innovation initiative, extension of Smart @ Pompei to promote skills and initiatives for cultural tourism on the site;
- the goal of making Pompeii one Smart Archaeological Park in Italy and in the world, that is an integrated technological model to manage and control the safety of visitors and sites both in normal conditions and in emergency conditions;
- in addition, there are modern systems of video surveillance, entrance control, anti-intrusion, seismic, hydrogeological, air quality monitoring.
Cover photo source: Facebook page Pompeii - Archaeological Park
