Boston Dynamics announced two new efforts that will make the company's quadruped robotic platform, Spot, a flexible tool for robotic developers.

Since the Spot Early Adopter Program started in late September, the company's customers across the world have had success building software applications and custom payloads on the platform in industries ranging from construction, energy utility, public safety, mining, and entertainment.

"At Boston Dynamics, we want to build on the momentum of these developers. Starting today, the Spot Software Development Kit (SDK) will be publicly available to view on Github, so that interested developers can see what’s available on the platform as soon as possible," Boston Dynamics said.

The SDK enables a broad range of developers and non-traditional roboticists to communicate with the robot and develop custom applications that enable Spot to do useful tasks across a wide range of industries. From VR control to automated registration of laser-scanning, connecting Spot’s data to cloud work order services, using Edge computing to help Spot understand its environment, and much more, the possibilities of integrations on Spot are many.

Developers will still need to become part of the Early Adopter Program to lease the robot to execute their code, but all interested parties can now view the SDK and existing early adopters can open source their own code.

In addition to open-sourcing our SDK, Boston Dynamics announced the 'Actuate' user conference. Set to take place May 12-13 in Boston, Massachusetts, the annual event will bring together the global ecosystem of Spot sensor providers, software developers, and end-users for two days of industry presentations, hands-on workshops, and networking geared towards putting Spot to work on sites around the world.

Actuate 2020 will be invite-only for existing ecosystem members. Those interested in attending, but not yet early adopters, can fill out the Spot sales form to speak to the company's team about joining the Early Adopter Program.