I thought stairs were on of the hardest aspects for robots to master. I know the four leg bots are better but I still think having these heavy dense robots climbing 4+ stories of stairs would present more of a danger then it would help mitigate. Some kind of special built inspection system that runs along rails or something seems like a better use case.

>Some kind of special built inspection system that runs along rails or something seems like a better use case.

Drones are getting popular ,with laser scanners mounted on them, for older platforms.

But what really makes the most sense to me is just locally networked sensors stuck right on the equipment. Not IoT, L(an)oT.

They are, but if you pull up the videos of Big Dog and its smaller chassis-brethren, you find that they're quite a ways towards solving that problem.

That having been said: special-built inspection systems would make more sense if it's cheaper to retrofit one in than to buy a robodog.