Boston Dynamics mainly did DARPA contracts for a long time. And their stuff had a certain reputation... "If the contract said MTBF > 10 hours, then they pretty

Boston Dynamics mainly did DARPA contracts for a long time. And their stuff had a certain reputation... "If the contract said MTBF > 10 hours, then they pretty much ran for 10.5 hours." They really have little expertise in designing for delivering customer value, or likewise designing for user experience. I've worked in robotics for a long time, and the thing I repeatedly see is under-attention to user experience. BD robots simply lack empathy. There are a huge number of robotics engineers who hear "lacks empathy" and snort dismissively at that criticism, and then go on to crater their robotics startup and wonder why. The reality is that it is very difficult to come up with a robotics business model where the question: "Why does a robot deliver value better than some other solution?" has a good, clear, answer. But if you can manage to clear that hurdle, then you need to bring the appropriate design sensibilities to your product because your survival depends on it.