Oh look. Boston Dynamics — of future robot apocalypse fame — have made another mechanical dog. And this one can go inside houses. Great.
The first time I saw the above gif (via Super Punch), I laughed, not at the "animal cruelty", but mostly because I could imagine this guy's business card actually saying "robot dog kicker".
But then you watch it over, and over, and over. And even after the "animal cruelty" angle has come and gone, which makes you uneasy as it is, you start to imagine what happens after the gif cuts off. Like, this spindly robot dog, able to correct its balance in such a fast and natural way, decides "fuck this", and launches itself at the guy, tearing him apart.
Of course, as you can see in the full video below, that's not what happens.
Yet.
The dog is called "Spot", and is designed to operate both indoors and outdoors, even over "rough terrain". And in all seriousness, it looks super impressive. For every time we laugh at an expensive robot falling over, there's something like this that reminds us just how sci-fi our contemporary existence really is.