How can a robot dog help keep health-care workers safe?

From opening doors for its friends to detecting bombs to dancing the Running Man, there is apparently no end to the versatility of Boston Dynamics’ Spot robot dog. And now there’s another thing to add to the list: protecting health-care workers from potential COVID-19 exposure.

The Spot robots are currently being used in triage tents at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. Equipped with an iPad and two-way radio, the robots serve as an interface where health-care workers can perform an initial assessment on potential COVID-19 patients without risking exposure. Using the robots also allows the workers to conserve personal protective equipment.

The robots don’t have the ability to take vital signs like temperature yet, but that is something that Boston Dynamics is working on implementing. The company also wants to figure out how the robots could be able to disinfect themselves, so that they could potentially perform more tasks in place of health-care workers.

Additionally, since this system could be used on any wheeled or tracked robot, the company has made the technology open source on GitHub for others to use too.