Watch a real dog face off with Boston Dynamics’ robot dog

Google’s robotic dog Spot has a new playmate-an actual dog.

In a new video released by Boston Dynamics, a dog meets a robot version of itself, and it wasn’t quite love at first sight. In the video he tirelessly lets him know there is only room for one dog over there. The robot dog was sent into action when it accompanied soldiers through a series of drills, and it was wired to weather unsafe terrain, climb stairs, jog and remain upright when kicked with human force.

Rubin previously ran Google’s robotics division before leaving the company after almost a decade in 2014.

Spot had been originally designed for the military however the army quickly realised that while great at looking cute, Spot wasn’t the future of army transport.

Alex and Spot do not get along. After witnessing the spectacle in person, Jurvetson told IEEE Spectrum he was impressed by Spot’s “lifelike movement”. Also adding “And the tradition of the uncanny valley continues …”

Pineiro says that he sees Spot as a ground reconnaissance asset, but the bot lacks the autonomy to perform that role since it is controller driven at this time.

“We tend to play with things that are fanciful and odd”, Kyle Olsen said, a spokesman for Warfighting Labs.