Robot dog makes helping people a piece of cake

Unlike your family pet, Pantex Emergency Management robotic dog, Cupcake, can do more than just sit or shake; she can autonomously open and walk through doors.

Training a dog is not as easy as pushing a button—unless your pup is a robot dog.

Sit, fetch, and roll over are all common tricks for four-legged companions, but for Pantex’s agile robot dog, Cupcake, tricks are more technical.

“She can open and go through doors,” Emergency Preparedness Specialist William Easley-McPherson said. “We tell her on the controller what type of handle it has and she is programmed to open a variety of doors autonomously. She can provide a live-view with her multiple cameras and laser detection which gives us situational awareness for any kind of incident.”

Just like a normal dog, Cupcake needs to be fed and rest from time to time. Instead of kibble, she relies on electricity to keep her going and has a special kennel where she energizes.

“She can go, sit down, and basically go to sleep and it charges her battery,” Easley-McPherson said. “When she knows she’s low on battery she automatically heads to her kennel to recharge.”

Cupcake was purchased from Boston Dynamics in 2023 as part of a Plant Directed Research and Development grant funded by the Department of Energy. Her original name was Spot, but she was lovingly renamed Cupcake by a team member's daughter. Easley-McPherson is one of her handlers and says part of the mission will be to go where it is dangerous for humans to go.

“The first and foremost priority is human safety and the ability to expand situational awareness,” Easley-McPherson said. “Not only for radiation, but let’s say we have a building collapse for some unknown reason and we needed to know if it is safe to go in there or if we have people who need to be rescued.”

Easley-McPherson said in situations like this he could put Cupcake into crawl mode and produce a live feed of building support beams and see if any areas need reinforced before people go in for rescue efforts.

“She’s very stable,” Easley-McPherson said. “She also has the ability to handle electrical things that would possibly be unsafe for people, like high voltage. Her arm can manipulate breakers; she can flip one. Whereas a person would have to suit up and get into protective gear, she can go in and do it straight away.”

Easley-McPherson noted that future package upgrades could allow Cupcake to take measurements of radiation. The main goal, he said, is keeping the human operator as safe as possible.

“If there ever is a situation where we want to know if it’s safe to approach, Cupcake is the one we could send in first to obtain real-time measurements.”

Cupcake has generated interest in the community from local schools, colleges, robotics clubs, and emergency services partners covered under our mutual-aid agreement.

“Robots are going to become such a unique part of our future and our children’s future,” Easley-McPherson said. “They’re going to be doing more of the repetitive or unsafe tasks to keep people safe. When we take Cupcake to the West Plains High School Robotics club—they’re already studying and building their own robots. They’re able to see a professional commercial robot and its capabilities and what can be done in the future.”

Cupcake strengthens social engagement through live demonstrations, such as the 2024 Introduce a Girl to Engineering event. Participants were split on response to the robot.

“Almost straight down the line we have two reactions,” Easley-McPherson said. “One set—they love it and they think it’s the coolest thing. They want to interact, they want to learn more about how it works, and they want to see the display. The second are a little creeped out by it that this thing can do things autonomously. They’ll say ‘what do you mean you can point it at a door and tell it to open it?’”

Despite the polar-opposite reaction, Easley-McPherson says many of the participants wanted to take a selfie with Cupcake to commemorate seeing a working robot in action. He wants to take Cupcake to more of the area schools to build on community outreach and show people what is possible with technology.

“It all goes back to protecting people,” Easley-McPherson said. “We can teach the next generation about robotics and how it can be useful in life whether that be practical, fun, or for emergency situations.”