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WIRED
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- WIRED
We Bought a ‘Peeing' Robot Attack Dog From Temu. It Was Even Weirder Than Expected
For less than the cost a round of drinks, a plasticized Boston Dynamics fever dream could be yours too. Courtesy of Esat Dedezade All products featured on WIRED are independently selected by our editors. However, we may receive compensation from retailers and/or from purchases of products through these links. In my 15 years of reviewing tech, this pellet-firing, story-telling, pretend-urinating robot attack dog is easily the strangest thing I've ever tested. Arriving in a slightly battered box following a series of questionable decisions on Temu, I'm immediately drawn to the words 'FIRE BULLETS PET' emblazoned on the box. And there, resting behind the protective plastic window with all the innocence of a newborn lamb, lies the plastic destroyer of worlds that my four-and-a-half-year-old immediately (and inexplicably), names Clippy. Clippy is a robot dog. Of sorts. And he (my son assures me that it's a he), is clearly influenced by the remarkable, and somewhat terrifying, robotic canine creations of Boston Dynamics—a renowned company that's leading the robot revolution. Naturally, given the $50 price tag (a little less if you don't want the—ahem—spinal-mounted pellet gun), I'm not expecting Clippy to perform miracles. But, given my track record, being served an Instagram ad promising all manner of animatronic wizardry for less than the cost of a round of drinks in a London bar, the opportunity was too tempting to pass up. What happened, almost inevitably, was a lesson in not taking the social media ads you are served at face value. But, actually? It was also a lot of ridiculous fun. Robot Attack Dog: Lab Notes After freeing Clippy from his box, I'm immediately met with some of the lightest, cheapest, glossiest plastic I've ever come across. I have nothing against plastic. Remember the Nokia Lumia 920? Its polycarbonate body remains one of my favourite phone designs to this day. Sturdy, solid, and light, it was everything an object clad in plastic should be. Clippy and his accompanying remote, on the other hand, provide a somewhat Christmas cracker toy-like level of confidence in their durability. Clippy's main body, filled with the bulk of the electronics, is weighty enough, but his four spindly legs do not give the impression that they're up to the task of supporting anything. Except, of course, that I am in ownership of the turret-toting model, which promises to lay waste to enemies by bombarding them with water-absorbent pellets (more on that in a bit). Overall, the entire ensemble resembles an elongated CCTV camera on legs, with a turret resting on top—suitably menacing, and genuinely not far off Boston Dynamic's bona fide offering, in looks, at least. Courtesy of Esat Dedezade Elsewhere, I can only assume that the controller has been pumped full of helium, such is its hollow, airy lightness. Heavily inspired by the shape of an Xbox controller, I particularly love the fact that its bumper buttons and triggers are simply formed from one immobile piece of moulded plastic. There's something quite beautiful in their utter uselessness that I enjoy very much. As for the business end, it's an ADHD nightmare. Littered with a chaotic array of buttons in seemingly no logical order, I give credit to the designers for creating a controller that laughs in the face of muscle memory. Initial attempts at turning Clippy on are unsuccessful. The on/off switch does nothing, and the charging light remains dead when the USB-C cable is plugged in. There are no instructions. Opening the battery compartment reveals the culprit—the battery is disconnected. Was this to avoid it draining in transit, or to reduce the risk of spontaneous combustion? Either way, it's plugged back in. Clippy lives. And wow, he's loud. The built-in speakers are beyond shrill. I desperately look through the carnage of controller buttons, hoping to find a volume or mute option. There isn't one. Naturally, I press 'urinate' first. Clippy's hind leg raises. That, I expected. What I didn't expect, was cheerful whistling, and the sound of water tinkling into a toilet bowl. I look, and happen upon the 'handstand' button. This, I feel, will be an impressive test of his dexterity. A handstand maneuver will surely call upon multiple gyroscopes and accelerometers, combining and crunching data from numerous sensors in real time to ensure that Clippy's body remains perfectly poised in balance. I press the button, and Clippy immediately—and rather violently—faceplants. The force of this manoeuvre takes me off guard, and the impact is loud. I am worried. A moment passes, his rear legs rise, and they begin to twitch. I presume this apparent seizure is meant to represent elegant scissor kicks. It's reminiscent of how ants communicate with their antennae, a form of silent communication. 'Don't blame me bro, did you really expect anything else?' I can almost hear him plead. But, somehow, Clippy does return to his feet and appears unscathed, ready for more. Me? I'm not so sure. Multitalented As I mentioned, the controller has many, many buttons—no less than 17 functions in fact—and I'm not going to bore you with overly gratuitous descriptions for each one. Instead, here's a quick rundown of the main buttons, to give you a general idea of some of Clippy's talents: Kung fu: Absolutely zero semblance of any martial art moves, or even a cheeky backflip. Instead (and completely inexplicably), some form of poolside, Lost Frequencies-esque lounge music blasts out. Clippy 'dances.' Swimming/Dance: I recently saw Usher perform live. Both of these buttons involve vigorous floor-humping that surpass even his most sexually charged efforts. A truly impressive feat. Oh, and a side note for any optimists out there, Clippy is not waterproof. Do not, I repeat do not, introduce him to water. Push-up: Clippy blasts out push-ups while playing the guitar riff from'Eye of the Tiger.' I have no further notes. Story: Buckle up, pressing this button results in very loud, tinny classical music blaring out over a spoken story. The narrator has an Eric Cartman-like twang to their voice, and the speaker quality means I can barely make out what's being said. The only plot I manage to grasp is about an old woman and an ageing cat. The woman scolds the cat for not being able to catch mice, as it has no teeth. The cat bestows a moral about respecting our elders for the contributions they used to make in their youth. The next story, I think, involves a pigeon. It may be injured. Courtesy of Esat Dedezade Despite this clearly incredible skillset, it is interesting that Clippy's ability to be controlled or steered via the remote is … flawed. Going forward is generally fine, and there are left and right buttons which cause him to turn very slowly, often toppling over in the process. There is no reverse, so I constantly have to pick him up before he collides with walls and furniture (no collision detection cameras appear to be present). He can, at least, shake hands (or "hadn-shake" on the remote) like any well-trained pup. It would also be remiss not to mention that there is an official app which lets you control your robot dog via Bluetooth. Once you figure out how to change the language to English, it's easy enough to navigate, and there are even some bonus features they couldn't squeeze onto the remote. For example, you can select different 'foods' for him to eat, ranging from a bone to 'Nuclear Energy Source'—all of which result in various forms of eating animations. There's also a voice command mode, which doesn't seem to work. Despite offering all the permissions asked for (including, against my better judgement, access to my phone and files), voice commands seem to fall on deaf ears. There's also a program mode which lets you set up custom actions, though all my attempts seem to end up in more faceplants. Munitions Report According to the product page, Clippy's back-mounted turret 'can be loaded with water bombs to launch for fun.' The image accompanying this description is impressive. Two blue projectiles appear to blast forth from the cannon. I immediately picture an autonomous robotic guard dog patrolling the house, scanning for threats, and dispensing justice as appropriate. The reality is a tiny packet of minuscule blue balls, about a millimetre in diameter. Once soaked in water for a few hours, they plump up, and you can load them into the turret, before firing away. The test takes place in the makeshift bathtub firing range. I drop a few of the blue gel-like pellets into what is presumably the correct slot in the turret (I once again remind you of the lack of any instructions), and tell my son to stand back, in case the velocity rebounds anything towards our eyes. I look down at the controller, and finally press the 'attack' button. Clippy walks forward a few steps, crouches to steady his aim, and two pellets dribble out with all the urgency of a clogged ketchup bottle. This method is repeated about ten times, with mixed results. At best, a pellet is fired relatively straight, but still not without any meaningful force—certainly not enough to even penetrate a wet square of toilet paper. We tried. After the ammo is spent, we decide that it's time to watch him faceplant again. But should you buy this thing, as (relatively) cheap as it is? I think the answer is obvious. But while it's all too easy to slate, playing around with Clippy has taken me back to my childhood, where toys like this were life. Clippy, as terrible as he is, has entertained my son daily, for the week that we've spent testing him. He brought him into our bedroom every morning, waking me up with a shrill, unintelligible story before blasting out a guitar riff with an enthusiasm that is already wearing thin. It won't be long, of course, before Clippy gathers dust in some corner, replaced by the Next Thing. I imagine he'll end up in a thrift store, awaiting a new family to dazzle and confuse in equal measure. I just hope, whoever they are, that they like Survivor.
Irish Times
22-05-2025
- Irish Times
Robodogs, digital forensics and ghost guns: inside Interpol's innovation lab
A fleet of underwater drones, gleaming and ready for action, is lined up along the wall. Nearby, a small armoury of brightly coloured, 3D-printed guns is displayed on a side table. A robot dog, named Inno, lies prone on the floor, waiting to be activated. In the leafy Singapore suburb of Tanglin, over the road from the British high commission and the US embassy, and a block away from the botanic gardens, Interpol 's innovation centre is where law enforcement officers from around the world come to analyse the latest strategies of organised criminals and develop techniques for bringing them down. One side of a global arms race is being waged here, as the international police organisation tries to stay ahead of its increasingly sophisticated and professionalised criminal adversaries. For a decade this modest research facility, kitted out with technology at the forefront of policing, has been a mecca for forensic scientists. The centre is set within Interpol's large, fortified complex in Singapore, its second biggest office behind its headquarters in Lyon, France. READ MORE The site also includes one of Interpol's three global command and co-ordination centres which, along with facilities in Lyon and Buenos Aires, provide 24-hour monitoring for police in nearly 200 countries. If a suspect on Interpol's most-wanted list crosses an international border, they will be flagged here. In 2024, 215 fugitives were caught this way. This year, Mohamed Amra, the gangster known as 'The Fly', who was named France's public enemy number one after his escape from custody left two prison guards dead last May, was arrested in Romania following an operation involving an international network of police. The Singapore office is where Interpol studies a range of modern criminal activities, including cyber crime, digital piracy and counterfeit pharmaceuticals. As in many industries, the business of crime has been profoundly affected by developments in artificial intelligence , upending the cat-and-mouse game played by the police and criminals. 'The changes in criminality we have seen over the last two to three years because of advances in technology are bigger than at any point in my career,' says Fabio Bruno, a bespectacled Italian, who started as a fraud investigator in the late 1990s and now runs Interpol's digital forensics team. Bruno and his colleagues – Paulo Noronha, a Brazilian, and Abdulla al-Jalahma, from Bahrain – take me on a tour of the digital forensics lab. Here the team uses an array of gadgets, from chip readers to smartwatch testing tools, to disassemble digital devices before extracting and analysing their precious data. Near the door sits a bulky suitcase, heavily padded with a dozen or so cartridges that resemble retro video games. These are readers for the infotainment systems of a variety of car models. Each cartridge can be hooked up to the mini computer that sits inside most modern cars and stores huge amounts of data on their movements. Vehicle digital forensics is one of the fastest-growing areas of criminal investigation. 'Sometimes if the suspect connects their phone to their car entertainment system, we can even access their messages and call history,' says Noronha with a mischievous grin. The mobile phone has become arguably the most important piece of evidence for criminal investigators. It holds a wealth of information on communication, movement and search history, as well as personal media files. Criminals often try to break or discard their phones when they realise they are about to get caught. But even if the screen or the handset is damaged, the most valuable information is stored in a labyrinth of microchips. Half the Interpol lab is dedicated to workstations for extracting circuitry from broken phones and other devices, using digital microscopes and tiny precision tools. Around a corner is a portable 'clean room', a glass box with an extractor to purify the air and keep out dust. The chips are highly sensitive to contamination. Next to it is a thick metal door leading to a windowless office. This is a Faraday room, Jalahma explains, which blocks electromagnetic signals. It is here that investigators take phones that are off or dead and turn them back on for inspection. 'It is like an underground bunker,' says Jalahma. 'If you turn a phone on and it connects to a network, there is always the risk that someone will be able to connect to it and wipe it remotely. We cannot take that risk.' A logo at Interpol's Global Complex for Innovation building in Singapore, which aims to strengthen global efforts to fight increasingly tech-savvy international criminals. Photograph: Roslan Rahman/AFP via Getty Images The lab also features a range of 3D laser scanners: special cameras that capture a 360-degree impression of a crime scene. Set atop a 6ft tripod, the tall black dome head resembles a sleeker version of a surveying tool common on most building sites. During a 20-second rotation, its multiple sensors and cameras can map out a high-definition 3D image, limiting the chances of contamination. 'You can have fewer people walking around, adding their own footprints and potentially accidentally tampering with evidence,' says Bruno. Investigators can revisit the scene remotely with more accurate measurements of bullet trajectories or bloodstain patterns than by traditional methods. The virtual crime scene provides juries with a more immersive way to assess evidence. The International Criminal Police Commission, as it was known, was founded in 1923 as a group of police forces from 20 countries. Interpol today counts 196 countries as members, a global organisation that unites the US, China, Russia, Ukraine and Iran. Just a handful of countries are not members, including North Korea, Kosovo and Taiwan. More than 10,000 of Interpol's famous red notices – international alerts for wanted individuals – are issued every year. The first was for a Russian man accused of killing a police officer in 1947. Since then, Interpol has launched a rainbow of different notices: yellow for missing persons, black for unidentified bodies, silver for criminal assets. Interpol encourages members to share investigative techniques, and it hosts centralised criminal record systems. One of its first priorities was cracking down on counterfeit currency, cheques and passports. It was through Interpol that fingerprint identification techniques, developed by Danish police, spread globally. The organisation now hosts 19 separate databases, centralising more than 225 million police records on areas as diverse as travel and identity documents, firearms and stolen property. One tracks lost artwork, containing descriptions of cultural objects stolen from museums or looted from war zones such as Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. Another logs incidents of maritime piracy. In total the databases were searched some 7.4 billion times in 2023. [ Interpol being misused by China to target dissidents and others, ICIJ investigation finds Opens in new window ] Sharing information between police forces is a key part of Interpol's mission. At the Singapore complex, a dedicated team of cyber crime experts from police forces around the world work together to assess emerging cyber threats and alert countries that are under attack. Working at desks in rows and facing a screen showing live data on cyber attacks, the team gathers and analyses information on one of the fastest-moving areas of organised crime. The Singapore office was opened in 2015 to act as a global hub for tackling the emerging threat of cyber crime. As AI-enabled crime has risen to prominence, the team is now focused on deepfake romance scams, sextortion and multimillion-dollar phishing attacks. 'AI has completely changed the criminal's business model,' says Huanzhang Fu, a former policeman from China who leads the AI lab. A decade ago, a widely attempted fraud was the 'Nigerian prince' scam, wherein a victim is emailed by supposed foreign royalty, with the promise of shared riches if they provide an upfront payment. Today's AI-enabled scams are far more sophisticated. Large language models strip out telltale signs of a scam, such as spelling mistakes or syntax errors. Meanwhile, deepfake audio and video are used to provide 'proof' of the scammer's credentials. Southeast Asia is the global centre for romance-baiting scams, where fraudsters strike up phoney relationships with victims, convincing them to hand over ever-greater sums. The day I visit, the cyber centre is monitoring close to 3.5 million attempted attacks – a fairly typical day, I'm told, with education institutions, telecommunication companies and government agencies the hardest hit. The screens being analysed by the cyber specialists, on secondment from countries as diverse as Ukraine and Sri Lanka, show a particularly effective malware attack emanating from eastern Europe and targeting countries across north Africa and Asia. Advances in AI have brought about a new age in the global arms race between police and criminals – one that Interpol is battling to stay ahead of. [ Opens in new window ] Dogs have aided law enforcement since at least the Middle Ages. The word 'sleuth' is derived from bloodhounds in 14th-century Scotland, known as 'slough dogs' for their ability to track miscreants through boggy ground. The latest iteration of the police dog is the robotic K9, used to assess potentially dangerous scenes before entering. These robodogs, metallic and faceless with spindly legs, are packed with sensors to detect the presence of a range of hazards, from drugs and explosives to chemicals and radiation. Interpol's Chinese-made model is roughly the size of a German shepherd. It lies dormant during my visit, but I'm told it can run at up to 12km an hour and jump more than a metre high. The dogs' ability to climb stairs, carry phones or medical supplies, and send and receive audio messages makes them handy in hostage negotiations. Interpol's battles are also naval. Its collection of remote-controlled, blue submersible drones highlights the way criminals and police often use the same technology, in an escalating battle. Much like the flying drones gangs use to smuggle drugs and mobile phones over prison walls, their underwater cousins are used to transport contraband along rivers and out at sea. From Brazil, drugs and weapons are transported overseas strapped to the hulls of ships. In this so-called parasite smuggling, cocaine traffickers hire skilled divers to attach torpedo-shaped, waterproof containers to cargo ships bound for European and Asian ports. The ships' crews may have no idea they are part of a global smuggling operation. Interpol's drones monitor for parasites at major ports. [ Ireland is awash with cocaine, but how does it get into the country? Opens in new window ] Another area where police are catching up with criminals is the proliferation of 3D-printed firearms. A type of 'ghost gun', the plastic weapons first appeared just over a decade ago. The availability of 3D printers and print-to-order services online means criminals are finding it easier to manufacture bespoke firearms. Luigi Mangione, the suspect accused of shooting UnitedHealthcare chief executive Brian Thompson, was in possession of a pistol and silencer that police believe was 3D-printed. More than 27,000 ghost guns were seized by US police in 2023, up from 1,629 in 2017. Despite their flimsy appearance, each one can sell for as much as $2,000 (€1,750) on the black market. The replica gun parts on display at Interpol's lab are manufactured here to use in research into ghost guns' traceability. Unlike traditional firearms, which have serial numbers, it seems impossible to track the origin of a ghost gun. Researchers at the lab are working to link ghost guns to their specific printers, analysing distinctive production patterns. But for every success, the researchers at Interpol are acutely aware that the game of one-upmanship will continue, Bruno says forlornly. 'They are clearly learning from us just like we are studying them.' – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2025
