I'm not sure why anyone would need a robotic dog equipped with a flamethrower but whatever floats your boat. The Ohio company that makes these things assures us that they're perfectly legal in 48 states (though not Maryland and one other one).
And they are just expensive toys, a Unitree Go2 robot quadruped souped up with some fancy electronics and a bit of lethality in the flamethrower. They're still quite a ways off from Boston Dynamics' Spot, but that can set you back $75k-300k, depending on how it's configured.
Source: Arstechinca.com
If you've been wondering when you'll be able to order the flame-throwing robot that Ohio-based Throwflame first announced last summer, that day has finally arrived. The Thermonator, what Throwflame bills as "the first-ever flamethrower-wielding robot dog" is now available for purchase. The price? $9,420.
Thermonator is a quadruped robot with an ARC flamethrower mounted to its back, fueled by gasoline or napalm. It features a one-hour battery, a 30-foot flame-throwing range, and Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity for remote control through a smartphone.
It also includes a LIDAR sensor for mapping and obstacle avoidance, laser sighting, and first-person view (FPV) navigation through an onboard camera. The product appears to integrate a version of the Unitree Go2 robot quadruped that retails alone for $1,600 in its base configuration.
The company lists possible applications of the new robot as "wildfire control and prevention," "agricultural management," "ecological conservation," "snow and ice removal," and "entertainment and SFX." But most of all, it sets things on fire in a variety of real-world scenarios.
Whenever I see robotic dogs though I just have flashbacks of that Black Mirror episode called Metalhead with robot dogs designed to kill humans.
