What Happens When Dog Meets His Robot Version? They Play And We Have A Video

Stray canines playing with a robot dog sounds like a scene from a sci-fi film, but something similar happened at IIT Kanpur when curious stray dogs from the campus inspected a robot dog. The incident took place during IIT Kanpur’s annual tech fest called Techkriti. Muks Robotics, a company that designs and manufactures AI-powered general purpose robots, was displaying one of their ‘four-legged’ robots on the campus lawns when two or three dogs began circling around it curiously. The robot then started interacting with the dogs and even flipped on its back, like dogs do.

This video was shared on Instagram by Dr. Mukesh Bangar. As per his Instagram bio, Bangar is the Founder and CEO of Muks Robotics. He simply captioned the video, “Funny incident happened with robot dog vs real dog." This video has gathered over 6,000 likes since it was posted on May 16.

Commenting on it, an Instagram user wrote, “He’ll go back and tell his friends but they won’t believe his story!" Another joked, “Tragic AI is taking dog’s jobs too." Someone described this video as “Science meets reality." A few people also mentioned that the robot dog made by Muks Robotics bears a resemblance to Spot, the robot dog made by Boston Dynamics. “Did you just copy the Boston Dynamics design?," asked an Instagram user.

In May 2023, YouTuber Zac Alsop created a buzz after he bought a robot dog and participated with it at a dog show. Zac bought Unitree Go1, a quadrupedal robot which retails for $2,700 (approximately Rs 2.2 lakh) and named it ‘Roobot’. Zac described this fake pet as "doesn’t bark and actually listens to me."

To prepare for the dog show, Zac hired famous dog trainer Gina Pink, to guide him and Robot for the competition. After three days of training, Zac took part in the competition with his robot dog, creating much excitement and confusion among the spectators. Despite their best efforts, Zac and the Robot failed to win a prize. However, Zac’s Youtube video, which documented Roboot’s training and dog show performance, got over 20 lakh views and 47,000 likes. Commenting on his video, a YouTube user wrote, “This was extremely entertaining. People’s reactions were so fun, and I’m glad it was overall positive!"