MSCHF has warned us about the dystopian future of robots. It did it by arming a Boston Dynamic Spot Robot with a paintball gun. Now, we heard someone has made it (an armed robot dog) real.
Someone has reportedly bought a Spot-like robot dog which is readily available on Aliexpress for US$3,000 and outfitted it with a submachine gun. A media outlet identified the gun as a Russian PP-19 Vityaz submachine gun.
A video of the “weaponized” robot dog was posted on YouTube a few months ago by a user known as Alexander Atamanov, which I assume is the account holder’s actual name.
In the video, you can see the robot dog in action. However, it appears to be remotely controlled, as opposed to an actual weaponized autonomous robot dog. Which makes it a little less dystopian. Just a little.
A wheeled armor vehicle, which was IDed as a Russian BDRM-2 armored personnel carrier, was observed in the video and there appears to have a Russian flag on the robot dog. All of these point to the possibility that this armed robot dog was in Russia.
Judging how the robot dog is struggling to deal with the recoil of the submachine, it is safe to say it has nothing to with the military or black ops. No. Wait. Actually, that there is the problem.
This means any Tom, Dick, and Harry with the money and access to a machine gun can easily unleash a killing machine onto the street. Worst if this person is a genius who decided to give the robot dog a mind of its own. Yikes. Not good, folks. Not good at all. The future does feel very dystopian at this point. As if a gunslinging bipedal isn’t bad enough…
Images: YouTube (Alexander Atamanov).
via Technabob.
