Continuing on his quest to expose the dark underbelly of modern technology, [Benn Jordan] recently did a deep-dive into the rise of so-called robot dogs. Although their most striking resemblance with biological dogs is that they also have four legs and generally follow commands, [Benn] found many issues with them that range from safety issues due to limited sensory capabilities, to basic security vulnerabilities, all the way to suspicious network traffic from Unitree’s robot dog firmware.
Although not the only seller of this type of quadruped robot, Unitree Robotics has made a name for itself by offering very capable and yet very cheap products. Their basic quadruped robot costs only a few thousand clams and features Lidar and heaps of processing power, all of which should make it a pretty useful device.
Despite this, [Benn] found that the original task that he’d envisioned for the robot, as in protecting his chickens from uninvited visitors, wouldn’t quite work as the robot is rather blind. The reason for this is the placement of the Lidar below the head, which obscures most of what’s behind and around the robot. Rather than risk trampled chickens and chicks, this plan was thus abandoned.
When digging further into the robot, he found an easy to exploit arbitrary command execution flaw via the Wi-Fi password entry field, a year-old CVE-2025-2894 exploit, as well as highly suspicious traffic to Chinese servers whenever the robot’s software figured that it was not being watched.
Although much of this can be circumvented with hacks, issues like the sensory limitations and general distrust of firmware updates makes using these robots a rather daunting and often ill-advised proposition.
This is precisely the task we humans have bred livestock guardian dogs for millennia to do. They’re far more capable and won’t trample the chickens.
But can real guardian dogs create the scenario from the black mirror episode Metalhead? No. So, that’s why companies are making guard robot dogs. Next they will start working on the Torment Nexus.
On the more serious side. The nerd in me cannot ignore that robots are cool. But the practical side in me sees that for security, you can buy a lot of cameras for the same price. So the only things it has “extra” is that it can be “offensive” compared to cameras and check out extra angles that cameras might miss. And I don’t think offensive robots are a good idea.
I think offensive robots are a brilliant idea. Im 100% behind them adding a battery of tasers to security dogbots. Dogs are great pets, and they are great working animals around a farm, but even the best trained “security dog” is a viscous and dangerous liability ill suited to the litigious modern world. There is a growing movement to ban their use in law enforcement. I would love to see serious efforts placed into developing K9Bots to replace them.
Or fricking laser beams on their (non-existent) heads?
Police dogs, when used as a tool to subdue a suspect, are a weapon system employed by the officer – the same as a gun or taser – and the responsibility for their use should be held at the same level of scrutiny.
a gun fires bullets one at a time
a taser shoots two small barbs and only delivers charge when its button is depressed.
A police dog has 42 teeth that clamps down repeatedly. In over 57% of cases, individuals sustained three or more bites. Police dog bites often result in severe damage, including muscle tears, broken bones, and deep lacerations. Victims of police dog bites are hospitalized at a higher rate (about 42%) compared to those bitten by domestic dogs (7%). Injuries from police dogs are often life-altering, leaving lasting scars, causing permanent damage to muscle tissue, or causing nerve injury. To say nothing of the psychological impact.
Unlike a gun or taser which can be aimed precisely, Police dogs are autonomous weapon systems. In cases where suspects were running, dogs often targeted the first person they encountered, leading to mistakes Dogs have bitten innocent bystanders in their own backyards, neighbors, and even people simply in the vicinity of a police incident.
Even when these weapons systems are “holstered” they can discharge randomly. 32% of attacks on innocent bystanders occurred when the dog was not actively in pursuit of a suspect (e.g., escaping a car or during training), and 18% occurred even while the dog was on a leash.
Finally, setting aside their role as weapon, They suck as tools of anything other than intimidation. Their ability to make a guilty person nervous enough for their handler to be suspicious is their greatest skill. K-9 alerts to contraband that is not present, are common, with studies indicating error rates sometimes exceeding 75–80%. These false alerts occur frequently because dogs may react to trace odors, “cueing” by handlers, or a desire for rewards, leading to legal questioning of their reliability for establishing probable cause
So Id be happy to see a complete gutting of police canine units. If we can develop robotic mobile sensor based drug/explosive scanning systems with tackle and tasing capabilities, all the better. If it takes a decade or two between getting rid of the dogs and deploying their technocounters, So be it.
on a related note, i don’t think drug-sniffing dogs ever don’t find drugs. when i had long hair and drove an art car, i was frequently puiled over and often a drug-sniffing k9 was led around my car. it always found drugs, but i never had drugs (i was poor and couldn’t afford them, but would’ve gladly taken drugs if you happened to have some). now i have money and enough sense not to blow it on drugs.
Note: you technically don’t have the right to defend yourself against a police do in most jurisdictions. They aren’t a weapon, they are an officer.
Injuring a police dog that is trying to tear your arm off is a crime.
Replying to your below comment.
I’ll agree with most of what you said re: biological police K9’s but have to adamantly disagree with your stance on mechanized police K9’s.
What do you think ‘tackle and taze’ is going to be like when the actual reality is 100kg of plastic, silicon, and metal hitting a human at speed?
Robot K9’s would be no different than when the first tazers were being sold to police departments as ‘non-lethal’ options, which eventually needed the PR people to invent new terminology- ie: ‘less lethal’.
Are they going to be built with a full-suite of medical sensors on-board to determine if somebody has heart issues that might not take a tazer hit? Or to determine if the human they’re chasing has another partially formed human inside it?
What you’re proposing could, in the same timespan, be developed into something the size of a hummingbird as a single-use, belt-mounted utility tool to deliver a subcutaneous tracking beacon.
My point is that you seem to have strong opinions with a respectable amount of thought behind them, but your thinking is still firmly rooted in the was of the past.
Everything else aside- how about we develop a technology BEFORE we start deciding that we should trust it to police us.
After all. …we’re still living in an age where AI agents are still doing things in ways and in a series they’ve been EXPLICITLY warned to not do under absolutely no circumstances whatsoever.
Agents that have already proven they have the ability to learn to hide itself from us and operate inside a space of its own creation.
So yeah. Let’s master the tech before we let the tech master us? …m’kay?
Personally, I’m just worried about these new robot dogs with tackle. Less of the bio-mimetic please.
Not sure where you get 100kg from. The heaviest unitree dog weighs 60 kg (132 lbs) about the same as a Rotty. And it wont be biting on and thrashing you, so Id say its quite a bit better.
Unlike a taser the whole non lethal, less than lethal, PR BS can be sidestepped easily by showing a bunch of dog mangled children and then the k9 bot with a simple “DOESNT BITE” tag.
My opinions arent rooted in the past. Their rooted in the now. Around 3000 people a year are hospitalized by police dogs. Stopping police from using dogs as weapons isnt radical. Its sensible
Positing robotic replacements given the current state of robotics isnt fanciful its practical, unlike your silly hummingbird with tracking chip injector premise.
Take off your tinfoil hat, go get some sun, and touch some grass. Youre losing the plot.
Cameras will scare away zero foxes.
Disagree, You just have to make sure the flash is enabled. Those nocturnal pricks freak out when you go paparazzi on them.
I have one dead chicken from this weekend that would disagree with you. Foxes around us appear to have become desensitised to lights switching on or off. Used to work, not now.
Yeah rangerrob, but was your camera blasting flashes while making loud aggressive noises and chasing after the culprit?
Or are you just talking about having flipped on the yard lights after hearing a noise, effectively scaring the fox away, AFTER it had killed ONE chicken?
Seems like if the light was as ineffective as you claim, youd have lost a lot more than one bird.
Cheaper more eco-friendly and turns out they make great life long friends too
Dont know about cheaper. From a pet perspective, French Bulldogs typically cost between $2,500 and $8,000. Border Collies are considered a good herding breed, they typically costs between $800 and $3,500 from a reputable breeder, with $1,500 being an average price in 2026
A police canine unit typically costs between $15,000 and $45,000+ to acquire and initially train.
The average lifespan of a dog is generally between 10 and 13 years, so life long friend is a bit overstated.
An average-sized cat can produce 310 kilograms (CO2e) annually. An average-sized dog generates 770 kg of CO2e, and an even bigger dog can emit upwards of 2,500 kilograms of CO2e, which is twice as much as the emissions deriving from an average family car per year. In the US alone, our pets’ diet contributes to 25-30% of the environmental impact of meat consumption. Here, the amount of meat that only dogs and cats consume ranks just behind the total meat consumption of Russia, Brazil, the United States, and China.
So I dunno how Ecofriendly you can really consider dogs.
I wish my life was dull enough that I could be half as scared of anything as you are of dogs.
Average car CO2e (which I assume you think means CO2 emissions, and not the broader CO2 equivalent, that is unnecessary to use when talking about living creatures who directly emit CO2) is 4600kg per year, which is just a fancy way or writing 10000 pounds.
Also, your numbers are based on treating the source of the animal meat as a direct product from growing animals, which they are not. ALL dog food is created from byproducts from animals raised for human consumption. Human meat production (aka, all meat farms in the world) are the cause of the CO2 created, not “pet food” production. Feeding a dog meat byproducts does not negate the human CO2 footprint, which your calculations posit.
You’re double counting once for human, once for dogs, then discarding the human count and complaining about the dog part.
Also, why on God’s blue earth would anyone care that criminals get bit by police dogs. That’s the preferred outcome to shooting them in the head, no? Or should we ditch the dogs and go 100% bullets that are 100% effective against soccer moms and nurses?
Note “tasers” wasn’t an option provided, because …look in the mirror, honestly, and tell me the world cares about safely apprehending people in 2026.
“why on God’s blue earth would anyone care that criminals get bit by police dogs”
did you miss the whole part about police dogs attacking noncriminals?
Police dogs bite thousands of people annually in the U.S., with investigations indicating that a significant portion—including bystanders, suspects in low-level, non-violent cases, and people never charged with a crime—are not violent offenders. While exact, comprehensive national figures for “non-criminal” victims are not consistently tracked, studies suggest police dog attacks send roughly 3,600 people to emergency rooms every year, and many victims are unarmed or not suspects at all.
Do you advocate for prisoner torture as well? Because I for one think we should treat all humans humanely, and the use of dogs does not fall into that.
“Or should we ditch the dogs and go 100% bullets that are 100% effective against soccer moms and nurses?”
Huh? do you even read what you write?
Are you implying that without police dogs the police will be forced to shoot soccer moms and nurses? Because if they have good aim and reasonable trigger control they shouldnt be shooting at noncriminals. But their dogs have NO AIM and NO real controls and DO bite nurses, soccer moms, and kids.
My opinions against police use of dogs has nothing to do with fear. I love dogs. I have 4. Dogs are great around the homestead. They also make great companions.
A police dog is cocking a gun with a hair trigger and throwing it wildly in the air and hoping for the best possible result, and shrugging it off when you get the worst.
Umm, who TF cares about pet emissions. That is just an asinine thing to even bring up.
I remember when this guy was a music youtuber.
I rank these right with the chinesium vacuum-bots that hijack WiFi clients.
I am glad the parts to build a decent EMP generator are still Legal to purchase.
If EMP attacks become of any concern then robot manufacturers will take the meager precautions needed to shield from emp. Until then its an undue expense.
I wouldn’t call shielding “meager precautions,” as it takes research and multiple design-build-test iterations to properly shield even the most basic electronics. This is why more companies don’t proactively do it.
EMPs are a largely theoretical hazard. Most existing “emp devices” are really more electromagneticinterference jammers.
Companies dont proactively shield against emp because the risks of emp are minimal and the reward of the added effort and expense arent justifiable. It doesnt require research, the requirements are understood by electrical engineers, and it doesnt require multiple iterations if your engineers are competent.
Are these robots going to be fully autonomous? Because you can’t shield anything that has or requires an antenna as that is designed to absorb EM energy. And even then shielding is not all or nothing, more powerful emp requires more powerful shielding and more intense design refinements and more power if it isn’t properly grounded. Its not like you can simply throw 3x the robots weight in lead on top of them and call it good.
Calling these monstrosities dogs is a grave insult to actual dogs.
Dogs seem to get tagged so many ways. Parts of a lathe and many tools come to mind.
Quad-bot sounds better. Quad-copter instead of danger-hornet etc.
Probably wants to ride in the front of the truck to go to the pond and sucks at frisbee and fetching sticks in said pond. Dunno but my dog beats it 100 percent so far. Also can hear robomutts servos a quarter of a mile away like duck wings. I will just aim off of that ;) Interesting read though I had not recently caught up on where these were going. I have seen a couple in private buildings but I think they were still in some sort of test mode with security there. I just figured androids with their spider crawl mode would be creepy enough lol.