Woman Casually Walking Robotic Dog Down the Street Compared to ‘Black Mirror’

You may have seen people walking a variety of pets on leashes, including cats, rabbits, ferrets, and even the man in Japan who walks his giant tortoise.

But a video that’s gone viral on Tiktok shows something quite new—a woman turning heads on a busy street as she walks her robotic dog on a lead. The mechanical animal just obediently trots beside her.

A clip of the spectacle was shared to TikTok by @matriarca0601 on Friday, and it was later shared across Twitter that same day, by @pablobierzo15, amassing more than 800,000 views in total.

People are convinced this woman is living in the future with her mechanical pet, with the pair captured casually walking on a road in Leon, Spain.

The animatronic dog displays its agility by easily navigating the curb, stepping up onto the sidewalk. The sight turned heads on the crosswalk, and a bystander can be seen filming the pair as they walk past, with the clip available to be seen here.

Translated from Spanish, @matriarca0601 wrote: “What doesn’t happen in Leon.” While @pablobierzo15 captioned the clip: “In León there are people who live in the year 2097.”

Commenting online, @VBerciana asked: “I think it lives directly on Mars, right?”

Iker noted: “I didn’t know you could play a video game in real life, interesting.”

Ana Maria joked: “You don’t need a course to walk these dogs, right?”

“Finally a dog that can face a cat in a fight… hydraulic,” Raspu wrote.

A few people drew parallels with Black Mirror. In Metalhead, Episode 4 of Season 5, remarkably similar robots, armed with a variety of weapons, track humans.

“Hola Black Mirror,” Laravonlion wrote, while Chris P simply said: “Black Mirror.”

The yellow robot is in fact called Spot, and is made by company Boston Dynamics. It has additional features such as a mechanical arm, and an inspection element.

The company has other robotic models, called Stretch, Pick and Atlas, which are billed as “the world’s most advanced humanoid robot.”

Anyone wanting Spot as their new best friend will have to fork out a whopping $74,500, but the designers say it “comes ready to operate, right out of the box.”

Spot is adept at exploring “dangerous, inaccessible and remote environments,” and it can be used for anything from industrial inspection to entertainment.

“Spot is the quadruped robot that climbs stairs and traverses rough terrain with unprecedented ease, yet is small enough to use indoors. Built to be a rugged and customizable platform, Spot has a proven track record of supporting remote operation and autonomous sensing across a variety of industries, and is remarkably intuitive, enabling you to focus on the job you do best,” Boston Dynamics said.

It’s not the first sighting of Spot in Spain, after one was used to serve drinks in Seville earlier this year, ITV reported.

Spot was tasked with delivering beverages to customers, helping to keep Spaniards socially distant amid the COVID pandemic.

Newsweek reached out to @matriarca0601 for comment.