Google's robot dog meets real dog for the first time

Boston Dynamic’s robot canine tries to make friends with the real version, and fails.

Robot dog meet real dog.

This is the moment when Google’s robot dog, Spot, made its first encounter with a real dog (called Fido); and from the footage, it can be assumed the two will not be playmates any time soon.

Spot was originally designed to be used by the U.S. military but last year it was decided that the robot dog was too loud and reliant on human orders for active military duty.

Instead of Spot being sent to the scrapyard, Google-owned Boston Dynamics is trying to find it some friends.

The video shows Fido barking at his robot equivalent – unable to comprehend who the four-legged mechanical beast is.

Last week, Boston Dynamics released a video of its humanoid robot, Atlas, being pushed and tortured by its creators.

One of the aims of the project is to create robots that can eventually replace humans in dangerous military situations.