Hired at $20 an hour to walk robot dogs, Dimensional wants to install AI agents into Unitree robots
The San Francisco startup Dimensional is recruiting people at an hourly wage of $20 to walk robot dogs sold by Unitree Technology for $2,000, using cameras and sensors to collect real-world reference data and train an open-source operating system and AI agents that can be embedded in robots. Founder Pomichter said experiments show that agents' ability to control hardware is still very poor and cannot do without human involvement; the company has already purchased more than 100 robot dogs and 50 humanoid robots, with target scenarios being factories, data centers, construction sites and security patrols.
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$20 an Hour to Walk a Robot Dog: This US Company Wants to Install AI Agents in Unitree Robots
Phoenix Tech Download the App for Exclusive Early Access October 28, 2026 08:59:03 From Beijing Updated October 28, 2026 08:59:43
US Company Recruits People to Walk Robot Dogs
Phoenix Tech News, October 28 (Beijing Time) — According to The New York Times, earlier this month a startup in San Francisco posted an unusual job listing. It was hiring people to walk robot dogs, no experience required, at $20 an hour (about 133 yuan).
The hourly rate for walking a robot dog is about the same as for walking a real dog, but the robot dog needs to spend more time wandering around the sidewalks of San Francisco, completing its daily business such as "going to the bathroom." The job listing said each dog walk would take four to six hours.
The listing was later deleted. It was posted by a startup called Dimensional in a Facebook group called "Bay Area Jobs." Interestingly, the company happens to be located in a San Francisco neighborhood called Dogpatch.
The listing drew only a handful of comments, none of which found anything strange about it. One mother wrote: "My son is interested in this and can start right away." But she later said her son ultimately did not actually take the job.
Job Listing
Dimensional founder Stash Pomichter said the company is developing an open-source operating system for robots. The 26-year-old hopes to embed AI agents into robots so consumers can direct robots to complete work in the real world, just as people give instructions to services like Meta's agent Muse to complete tasks for them online.
Pomichter firmly believes people should be able to direct robots to lift heavy boxes and carry all kinds of items. "Honestly, humans still doing this physical labor to this day is just too primitive," he said in an interview.
Why Walk Robot Dogs?
However, before robot dogs can spare humans the hassle and indignity of hauling groceries, Dimensional still needs to improve the robots' autonomous navigation so they can move on their own in urban environments. That is why the company needed to hire robot dog walkers.
By operating and guiding a robot dog called RoboFido, they generate what Pomichter calls "ground truth" data for the robot, while cameras and sensors on the robot dog record the entire walk.
After seeing someone leading a four-legged mechanical "pet" down the street, one resident remarked that San Francisco really is a strange city, and is getting stranger all the time. The resident also provided a video to The New York Times.
Dimensional is not a hardware company. Pomichter said the company has bought more than 100 robot dogs and 50 humanoid robots from manufacturers in the US, China and Germany, and is developing an operating system that can integrate with AI agents to let these robots act more autonomously.
Unitree Robot
The robot dogs the company had people walk this month cost $2,000 each and come from the Chinese company Unitree Robotics. Out of the box, these robot dogs can be controlled with a handheld remote or a mobile app.
Dimensional compared how the robot dogs walked under human control versus under AI agent control, and found the latter's performance is still far from satisfactory.
"What we found from the dog-walking experiments is that agents are still very bad at controlling hardware," Pomichter said, "and humans are still needed in the loop."
Dimensional's goal is to enable robots to work in factories, data centers and construction sites, or to serve as security guards. Similar applications have already appeared: a robot dog patrols an apartment complex in Atlanta, with a human operator participating remotely from the Philippines. The robot is essentially a mobile security camera for a remote human observer.
Pomichter said he has written a program to have a robot dog patrol Dimensional's warehouse-like office at night. He gave the robot dog a prompt like this: "You are the world's best police dog," and asked it to track anyone who enters the building after midnight.
If the robot dog spots someone, it texts Pomichter. He can then check the surveillance footage to determine whether the visitor is an employee eager to work overtime or a stranger who broke in.
This month, the robot dogs roamed around the Dogpatch neighborhood, but not everyone found it amusing. Dimensional wants to give AI agents physical bodies in the real world.
But at the same time, more and more people are worried that more capable AI might try to kill humans. This Terminator-style horror association enraged one man. He went to Dimensional's office and then sent a disturbing text message to an employee, claiming the robot dogs would be used as weapons. According to a text message seen by The New York Times, the man wrote: "Have fun, you scumbag, helping to slaughter innocent passersby." Dimensional subsequently reported the matter to the police.
"We'll probably have to deal with more of this going forward," Pomichter said. "By then, we may need more patrol robot dogs." (Author/Xiao Yu)
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