Watch: China’s robot dog carrying a gun

A video of a Chinese robot dog with a gun attachment has gone viral on Twitter and Reddit, as per a report by Gizmodo. In the video, the four-legged robodog can be seen being dropped via a drone. As per the report, the video was first uploaded to the Weibo page of China Kestrel Defense. In the top right corner of the video, “Blood-Wing” is visible, which could be the name of the robot. The drone is called Red Wing, and as per Kestrel, can be used to conduct a surprise attack on the enemy with the help of the robot dog.

“War dogs descending from the sky, air assault, Red Wing Forward heavy-duty drones deliver combat robot dogs, which can be directly inserted into the weak link behind the enemy to launch a surprise attack or can be placed on the roof of the enemy to occupy the commanding heights to suppress firepower. And ground troops conduct a three-dimensional pincer attack on the enemy in the building,” says the English-translated video caption. Now, if China is looking at the future prospects of such a machine, what of the views of other robotics design companies out there?
When it comes to robot dogs, there is the robotics design company Boston Dynamics that is behind Atlas, a bipedal humanoid robot. And quite recently, it, along with some other robot companies pledged not to weaponise any of their robots, as per a report by Axios. The other robot companies to sign the pledge were Agility Robotics, ANYbotics, Clearpath Robotics, Open Robotics, and Unitree.
“We believe that adding weapons to robots that are remotely or autonomously operated, widely available to the public, and capable of navigating to previously inaccessible locations where people live and work, raises new risks of harm and serious ethical issues,” the companies said in an open letter to the Robotics Industry and their communities.
“We pledge that we will not weaponize our advanced-mobility general-purpose robots or the software we develop that enables advanced robotics and we will not support others to do so. When possible, we will carefully review our customers’ intended applications to avoid potential weaponization”, the companies further added in the letter.