How to shut down Spot the robot 'dog,' should you ever need to

Let's say, just hypothetically, that a surveillance robot styled after a dog was giving you a hard time. In this situation, you'd want to shut the thing down, and quickly. 

Thankfully, when it comes to Boston Dynamic's Spot robot, there are several ways to do just that. 

The robots, marketed for industrial use and used for viral hijinks, evoke a robot dystopia in the public imagination — a fact compounded by an April viral video of the NYPD trotting out its very own customized Spot. 

The first reported instance of police using Spot was in November of 2019, when the Massachusetts State Police leased at least one of the robots for a three-month trial period. The NYPD, it seems, wasn't too far behind.  Read more...