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Driver spots ‘local celebrity’ robot dog taking a walk: ‘Oh my god’

Instagram user Nathan Kanasawe was in a car on one northern Ontario street when he spotted a robot dog. The 23-year-old Canadian recorded the encounter, which has since gone viral.

The yellow and black robot dog is a part of Boston Dynamic’s Spot series. It has a long, headless rectangular body and four legs that mimic the shape of a canine’s with knee-like “joints” that bend backward.

“Local celebrity,” he wrote in the caption. “Y’all … please know it was being controlled by a guy off-camera, it wasn’t just wandering the city.”

In the clip, the robot walked up to the vehicle. When human bystanders spoke to it, it directed its attention toward them, walked backwards, paused, then continued its stroll into the night.

“Hello, friend,” one of the car passengers says to the robot as if it were a puppy. “Oh my god. I love you. I love you so much. Oh my god.”

After the video went viral from Kanasawe’s Twitter account with 14.2 million views, Boston Dynamics issued a statement.

“One of our Spot robots was recently filmed while out for an evening stroll with its handler, who is one of our commercial customers,” the press release said. “The customer was conducting routine mobility tests of the robot and kept it away from people, as required by our terms of use. We are excited about the peaceful, productive and well-supervised uses of our robots for commercial applications such as power generation, construction and process manufacturing.”

Spot is available for sale in Canada and Europe. The robot is designed to go where other robots can’t because it can climb stairs and traverse difficult terrain making it useful for addressing tasks indoors and in remote locations.

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