It’s been many years since Boston Dynamics first introduced their creepy-looking dog robot to the world at large and it’s been a fascinating run, with Spot eventually going on sale to the general public three years ago. Being able to buy one of Boston Dynamic’s robodogs, however, came with one stipulation: it can’t be used to harm people, which rules out turning it into the core fleet of your very own robot army. Fortunately, Spot isn’t the only robodog in town, so those who want to kit out their quadruped automatons into harbingers of destruction still have some alternate options. For instance, one of those alternate options is what they used to rig this fire-breathing Throwflame Thermonator.
That’s right, someone turned a robodog into a miniature dragon that can unleash a torrential rain of fire onto its unfortunate targets. No, it won’t fly, swing its tail, or look like a majestic creature as it descends upon your land, but it will absolutely scorch everything in sight much like the dragons in your favorite fantasy tales.
The Throwflame Thermonator is built off the Unitree Go1, a consumer-grade bionic quadruped robot that looks like a smaller and more accessible version of Boston Dynamics’ Spot. It sounds like a pretty capable automaton, too, with a gaggle of sensors allowing it to not just see its environment, but gauge distance, recognize angles, and identify what it encounters, so you can program it for a whole load of autonomous functions. Input from those sensors are piped to a 16-core CPU and 1.5-TFLOP GPU, allowing it to run sophisticated AI algorithms in real time.
The robot has flexible and adaptive joints, allowing it to perform movements resembling those of biological canines, with a walking cadence that enables speeds of up to 10 mph. It’s pretty light, too, tipping the scales at just over 26 pounds, so you should be able to pick up the robot for moving around when it’s powered down.
The Throwflame Thermonator takes the Unitree Go1 and mounts a flamethrower on top of its body. Specifically, it uses the outfit’s ARC Flamethrower model, a compact all-electric fuel-spraying contraption that’s been designed to be modular and adaptable to different setups. According to the outfit, the flamethrower has a maximum firing range of 30 feet, so the robot can set things ablaze while maintaining a fairly decent distance from its target, while push-button plasma-arc ignition ensures big roaring flames each time out.
The flamethrower has a built-in fuel tank sized to take less than half a gallon of gasoline or gasoline-diesel mixture, so you’ll have to be a bit judicious about where you unleash its wrath. We’re guessing you can rig up an expansion fuel tank to extend its flamethrowing endurance, although you’ll have to play within the robot’s payload limit of roughly 11 pounds. With the flamethrower mounted on the robodog, the flames can be triggered via a wireless remote (or you can program the robot to make its own decision, which will probably be a horrible idea).
The Throwflame Thermonator is not yet available, although you can join a waitlist over at Throwflame’s website. If you’re willing to do the modifications yourself, you can also opt to buy the robot and the flamethrower separately, which, we imagine, will be cheaper, albeit will require a lot of work on your end.