This Russian Killer Robot Dog Is Actually A Harmless Robot Sold On AliExpress

The Russian company Intellect Machine used Army 2022, an arms fair held near Moscow from August 15 to 21, to highlight its military robot dog model: the M-81. Equipped with an RPG-26 anti-tank rocket launcher and draped in black cloth giving it the appearance of a canine ninja, the machine made quite an impression.

For good reason, according to the RIA Novosti agency, a press organization under the supervision of the Kremlin, this veritable war machine can work in emergency zones “for reconnaissance, crossing rubble, delivering medicine” or even carrying out targeted attacks. , Numerama reports. .

A revised version of a Chinese model

However, in reality, the product is not the work of the Russian company, but of Unitree Robotics, a Chinese startup that was inspired by Spot, a robot dog developed by Boston Dynamics. The design of the M-81 is similar to that of the G01, its Chinese counterpart which‘it’s not meant to end up on a battlefield. The G01 is also available for sale on the Unitree site for the sum of $2,700 (about €2,650) and €4,687 on the AliExpress e-commerce site.

“Intelligence Shots” a twitter account specialized in open source information, traced the origin of the M-81. According to this source, two wealthy businessmen, Alexey Aristov, director of Intellect Machine, and Alexander Atamanov, founded the company last February after discovering the existence of the Chinese robot dog during an earlier exhibition dedicated to the technology.

They then financed the engineers’ modification of the machine to equip it with a rocket launcher and shared the first firing tests on You Tube to make themselves known. Goal achieved: The images, suggesting that this modified version of the G01 model is capable of attacking soldiers on a battlefield, quickly made the rounds on social media. A success that finally led to the presentation of the machine at the Army 2022 fair.