On the 27th (local time), an unusual job posting appeared on a Facebook job board in the San Francisco area, seeking someone to walk a robot dog for an hourly wage of 20 dollars, which is about 27,000 won, drawing significant attention.

The role being recruited for is a robot dog handler, and the main responsibility is to walk alongside a quadrupedal robot dog for four to six hours along a designated outdoor route in downtown San Francisco.

The hourly wage was set at 20 dollars, comparable to a typical dog-walking part-time job, with the condition that payment is provided immediately after the shift ends.

The work is performed solo, and no prior robot-related experience is required; workers only need a smartphone for the job, and paid training on safety guidelines and other procedures will be provided.

Unlike walking a real dog, there is no need to clean up waste, but in emergency situations such as the robot dog suddenly stopping or malfunctioning, the handler may need to safely pick up the 33-pound, approximately 15-kilogram device by hand and return to the office.

The New York Times reported that this recruitment notice was posted by Dimensional, a robotics startup headquartered in the Dogpatch neighborhood of eastern San Francisco.

Dimensional is developing an open-source robot operating system designed to handle real-world physical labor, such as transporting heavy loads.

Stash Formicter, the founder of Dimensional, stated that it is frankly barbaric that humans are still performing this kind of physical labor, emphasizing the necessity of robotic automation.

Dimensional explained that after conducting experiments walking robot dogs in actual urban settings, they confirmed that current artificial intelligence agents have significantly limited capabilities in directly controlling hardware in complex downtown environments.

Consequently, they posted this unusual job opening to measure and collect more data on real streets in order to improve the robot operating system and artificial intelligence.

CEO Formicter noted that human intervention is still necessary in these situations.

Based on the data from this experiment, Dimensional expects to improve the performance of its robot operating system, thereby enabling robot dogs and humanoid robots to be safely deployed in various work environments in the future, such as factories, data centers, construction sites, and security operations.

However, The New York Times reported that upon seeing these robot dog-walking experiments, some citizens were reminded of the gloomy future depicted in the movie "Terminator."

A citizen with an aversion to robot dogs even visited Dimensional's office and used inappropriate language toward an employee.

CEO Formicter remarked that incidents like this might increase in the future, jokingly adding that if so, even more patrol robot dogs would be needed.

(Photo: Getty Images)