Aren’t pets such a drag? I mean, really. They’re all furry, and cute, and innocent. And you have to feed them and love them, and respect their autonomy and basic needs. For what? Borderline unconditional love? Who’s got time for all that? Certainly not me. My job is computer, and I need efficiency—a practical companion that’s alive when I want it to be and shutting the f**k up when I need to have the TPS report filed by EOD so corporate can circle back on the EOY roadmap. You got all that? Me neither; I’ll just have AI summarize it for me. Alright, sorry, I’m done joking now. It’s time to get serious—or should I say… Sirius.
Sirius is a $1,200 robot dog made by a company you’ve never heard of called Hengbot. It’s part of a long lineage of robot dogs punctuated by the likes of tech titans like Sony, Xiaomi, Fisher-Price, and, uh, Ideal Toy Company’s impeccably named mechanical dog from 1960, Gaylord the Pup (you can’t make this shit up, folks). But this isn’t just another Gaylord. It’s a robot dog with—say it with me now—AI. Using large language models (LLMs) like the ones that power ChatGPT, Sirius comes equipped with the ability to understand voice commands. What can you ask Sirius? Some stuff.
Pros
- Dog-like movement
- AI for natural language prompts
- Game controller-compatible
Cons
- Falls way too much
- Connectivity issues
- Voice commands are spotty
- Not very cute
In a demo with Sirius, I saw the dog take voice commands like “sit,” “shake,” and “pee,” though I wouldn’t want to train your real dog to do that last one. They’re activated pretty much how you’d think they would be. Just blurt out, “Hey, Sirius,” and then talk away. The dog has to be connected to Wi-Fi to do all of this stuff, FYI—there’s no onboard processing, but this ain’t an iPhone after all. Speaking of iPhones, be careful when yelling “Hey, Sirius” because “Sirius” sounds an awful lot like another voice assistant, who’s had a bit of trouble with AI lately. I don’t know what happens when you ask your iPhone to pee, but frankly, I’d rather not find out.
I wasn’t able to test the voice commands with my review unit of Sirius because I had trouble connecting it to Wi-Fi, but I did get to see them in a live demo, and Sirius’s voice assistant looks about as good as Apple’s, which is to say… pretty mid. It recognized some commands right away, and others not so much. However mid Sirius is at processing and understanding voice commands, it’s much worse at (sigh) walking. This thing falls kind of a lot, and unlike a dog made of flesh and blood, it cannot figure out how to get up after taking said spill. Lots of my time testing Sirius was spent extricating it from the insufferable foibles of its own clumsiness. I have my own foibles to suffer, thank you very much. I don’t need a robot dog to add to the pile.
(Note: you may not have the same Wi-Fi headache as the one I encountered. My unit was a demo version and didn’t have the same OTA update as the ones shipping after. We’ll be updating this post if and when I can get Sirus online.)
Using a game controller provided with my review unit, I tried parading Sirius around the Gizmodo office for shits and giggles but found that (especially when it’s in autonomous mode) it would often get tripped up when I sent in an input to walk forward or move side-to-side and then flop to the ground harder than Cristiano Ronaldo when his team is down 2-1. Say what you will about dogs, but they’re pretty good at locomotion most of the time. When Sirius isn’t falling over, you can use a game controller to do some fun stuff manually, like directing it to jump in four directions (left, right, forward, or back) and also activate some silly commands like making it sit and meow like a cat. Cute!
I think if I’m going to give Sirius any credit, it’s that the actuators used to move the dog around are pretty cool and can actually simulate the movements of a real dog fairly well. I suppose, depending on your feelings toward robots, that could also be a point against it, too. There’s something vaguely uncanny valley about Sirius, and the weird, single robot eye on the dog’s face probably doesn’t help.
Despite the fact that Sirius, with its onboard camera, can actually track your face, it cannot follow you around like other robot dogs like Xiaomi’s Cyberdog. That’s a bummer. I think going for a walk is probably high on the list of things people would want to do with their new $1,200 pet, or toy, or AI companion, or… wait a second, what is this thing, actually? If you’re reading these words (and I’m sorry if you are), please send me your coordinates so I can tell the police to save you from the evil villain Clockwork Oranging robot dog reviews into your eyeballs—then you may also be curious who Sirius is meant for. The short answer is I have no freaking clue.
Is it a toy for serious adults who want an AI-programmable companion? Is it supposed to be cute? Like, I don’t know, Furby cute? Or Sony Aibo robot dog cute? I’m not positive, but if it’s the latter, then I would venture to say that it’s not really hitting the mark. Superficially, it looks like a cross between Boston Dynamics’ Spot and a DJI drone, and functionally, it can do a little bit more than the robot dogs of yore, I guess. But in practice, it’s just not very, I don’t know… fun. There’s a sort of binary that exists in gadgets, robot dogs included. There are toys—things that aren’t meant to do much, but they’re fun to use. And then there are tools. Things that do a thing that you need or very much want done. As it stands, I don’t think Sirius is hitting either of those marks, but in the end, the stakes are kind of low. I don’t know who this robot dog is for, but some dogs have no master, right? Then again, those dogs, sooner or later, often get sent to the pound…
