This San Francisco Startup Pays Rs 1,900 Per Hour To Robot Dog Walkers For AI Training

The startup was hiring robot dog walkers to improve the machines’ ability to autonomously navigate urban environments.

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No job experience is required for the role.
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A startup in San Francisco has grabbed attention for a unique job posting. The company, called Dimensional, is hiring people to walk robot dogs. The move would help the AI-powered dogs operate independently.

The company was offering $20 (around Rs 1,900) per hour to walk the robots. No experience was needed.

The ad was posted to a Facebook group called “Bay Area Jobs”. The ad has now been deleted, as per The New York Times.

San Francisco Startup's Job Post

The robot dog required four to six hours of walking, the ad claimed.

While walking a robot dog did not have any hassles of cleaning up, the machine came with its own set of problems. The equipment could become overheated, forcing the dog to stop in the middle of the sidewalk.

The dog walker would then need to carry the robot back to the startup's office. Applicants must be comfortable “safely handling equipment weighing about 33 pounds,” the ad warned, as per the report.

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Why The Company Is Banking On Robot Dogs

Dimensional's founder, Stash Pomichter, told NYT that he wants to embed artificial intelligence in robots so that consumers can use them for work in the real world just as they do online.

He explained that his company was hiring robot dog walkers to improve the machines' ability to autonomously navigate urban environments. The human operator controls the dog while the robot's cameras and sensors record the walk.

Dimensional bought 100 robot dogs and 50 humanoid robots from manufacturers in China, Germany and the US. The $2,000 robot dogs seen on the streets of San Francisco were purchased from Chinese firm Unitree. The machines can be controlled with a remote or an app.

“What we determined from our dog-walking experiment was that agents are still very bad at controlling hardware,” Pomichter stated. He explained that humans are still needed in the process.

Dimensional is working on developing operating systems that can be integrated with AI agents so the machines can work more independently.

Its aim is to use robots for work in factories, data centres and as security guards.

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