They expect their customers to come up with uses for Spot they can’t even imagine.

While the promotional content mentions boring but practical applications like remote construction and oil rig inspections, we can only imagine what uses the hacker community is going to come up with for a dog-sized, semi-autonomous robot. Personally, I’d love to send him go pick up my pizza. After a leisurely stroll to the local parlor, the manipulator arm could be used to hand money to the cashier, and the 360-degree cameras would capture every look of shock and uncertainty along the way. All he’d need is a bumper sticker proudly proclaiming, “This dog takes himself on his own walks.”

That’s probably in our future.

Of course, the more cynically minded might also imagine Spot delivering bombs or robbing banks. I don’t imagine it would be very difficult to mount a dozen handguns to his back to give him 360-degree firing coverage to match his cameras. Attaching a set of speakers to issue commands like, “This is a stick up!” and “Nobody move!” even less difficult. Complex motion-tracking software to shoot police and security guards wouldn’t even be necessary. Spot comes with a gaming-style remote controller and joystick that the company claims takes about 15 seconds to learn how to use: you simply point him in the direction you want him to go, and the software handles the complex aspects of terrain navigation and object avoidance.