It's fast, obeys commands and doesn't leave unpleasant surprises on the floor – the AlphaDog is a robotic response to China's love for pets and technology.

The high-tech hound uses sensors and AI technology to 'hear' and 'see' its environment. It can even be taken for walks.

"It's really very similar to a real dog," said Ma Jie, chief technology officer at Weilan, the Nanjing-based company behind the product. "It has the visual ability and sensors, so it can sense the surrounding environment. 

"It can predict the friction and height of the ground to adjust its height, and its stride frequency, and adapt to the environment," he told AFP, as the robot navigated a staircase.

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Its creators say this robot dog is the fastest on the market. It moves at a speed of almost 15 kilometers an hour and spins on the spot like an excited puppy.

In the first month of sales, more than 1,800 AlphaDogs have trotted off the shelves, despite the hefty price tag of $2,400. "The orders mainly come from the developers, tech geeks, and also kids, who really seem to like it," said Ma. 

The AlphaDog has four metal legs and is more stable than a real dog. Its creators are using 5G technology, super-fast internet speeds with immediate reaction times, to make the robot operate autonomously.

Ma studied reinforcement learning, the study of how to reinforce actions through reward or punishment, at the University of Oxford in the UK. He says he has used that knowledge to inform how the AI dog mimics canine habits. 

"We are exploring ways of helping the disabled, especially the visually impaired to live a better life," said Ma. "When the robot dog has the function of vision, hearing and dialogue too, it can easily interact with disabled people, and lead them to the supermarket or the bus."

Next generation AlphaDog

China has been making huge investments in robotics and AI, in an effort to upskill its workforce. Robots are already used to deliver parcels, serve in restaurants, offer information at stations and even take throat swabs for COVID-19 tests.

The Weilan workshop is staffed by young tech enthusiasts, filled with pencil design sketches and a central obstacle route of stairs and slopes for the machines to clunk over in testing. Developers there hope future uses of their four-legged friend could benefit the visually impaired.

Future software updates will include the dog "barking," and beyond that, even add human voices to allow conversations between pet and owner. 

There is also a larger "enterprise" dog model, designed for industrial inspections of machinery or pipes.

The next generation of the AlphaDog in pet form could also introduce "personalities" to the dog's toolkit to make them even more canine-like, as well as extend its somewhat brief battery life.

Video Editing: Jason Wright