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Amazon founder Jeff Bezos takes a robot dog for a walk

Bezos tweeted the Boston Robotics dog from MARS, Amazon's invite-only robotics conference in California.

Jennifer Bisset Former Senior Editor / Culture
Jennifer Bisset was a senior editor for CNET. She covered film and TV news and reviews. The movie that inspired her to want a career in film is Lost in Translation. She won Best New Journalist in 2019 at the Australian IT Journalism Awards.
Expertise Film and TV Credentials
  • Best New Journalist 2019 Australian IT Journalism Awards
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Jennifer Bisset

Jeff Bezos is definitely a science fiction fan.

Working that Tony Stark brand, Amazon's billionaire founder strutted down a path alongside a robot dog at the company's MARS conference on Monday at the Parker Hotel in Palm Springs, California. The invite-only gathering of robotics companies and academics, first held in 2016, focuses on machine learning, automation, robotics and space exploration.

Bezos, a rare tweeter, posted the picture on his Twitter account to his 480,000 followers.

The pooch's name is SpotMini and it looks like the killer robot dogs in the "Metalhead" episode of "Black Mirror". A recent video from creator Boston Dynamics showed a levelled-up SpotMini using an extendable arm to open a closed door. Now all it needs is a slot to insert its murder weapon of choice.

Bezos's robot love was captured in another tweet in which he plays the bottle flip game with a robot.

Bezos has been showing off his robot friends since last year's conference, where he piloted a 13-foot-tall robot called Method-2, created by South Korean company Hankook Mirae. Luckily, that cute "Pacific Rim"-type giant was more for show than function.