Flock-Connected RoboDogs: The Future Is Now
In an email I found through open records, robodogs with Flock integrations were pitched to my son's daycare. That's just the start - welcome to Black Mirror.
Undaunted is a ‘robotics’ company founded because the Atlanta Police Department apparently couldn’t remove unhoused people from a construction site without drawing their guns (yes really - their words not mine). Although their website does not mention how AI-powered robotic dogs would’ve avoided this situation.
It was started in 2025 by Bryan Dinner, a entrepreneur from Wharton, who said “Undaunted was originally supposed to be a CRM for lawyers, accountants, and wealth managers”, then decided to pivot to robot dogs.
And if you were thinking to yourself - wow that’s a bold move to go from software and no experience in manufacturing or policing, to jump straight into manufacturing robotics dogs.
There’s some good news! Undaunted doesn’t manufacture anything, all they do is buy Unitree Go2 robotic dogs from Hangzhou Yushu Technology Co., Ltd, a robotics company based in Hangzhou, China.
Calling Undaunted a robotics company because they strap some cameras to shitty Chinese robodogs would be like calling everyone who put a dashcam on their car an auto manufacturer.
They can’t even be bothered to take images of their ‘own’ robots for marketing. The front page of their website literally includes a picture of a stock Unitree robodog, void of their AI cameras on top.
On top of this - surprise! Who would’ve guessed? Security researchers have found that they are riddled with security vulnerabilities and found out these robodogs come preinstalled with a backdoor, sending the information they are recording to China. Maybe they’re getting us back since, if you didn’t know, “Silicon Valley enabled brutal mass detention and surveillance in China.”
But I digress - their main product is supposedly providing ‘monitoring’ through their robodogs. As their founder said to the Atlanta Journal Constitution, Undaunted offers “both US operations, and we’ve got an operations out of the Philippines. For most of these properties, they’re really price sensitive and so they choose the Filipino operators.”
In that same interview with the AJC, when asked about why Atlanta for these robodogs: “The two largest real time crime center software companies are here. We have Georgia Tech here with incredible mechanical engineers, great manufacturing and the port of Savannah. So you’re gonna see a lot of that supply chain and a lot of that that talent leading to it being a hotbed for robotics companies.”
Personally, I find it particularly rich that he talks about manufacturing and engineering in Atlanta (I’m a mechanical engineer from Georgia Tech), while his business model appears to be just importing shitty Chinese robots, strapping a camera to them, and outsourcing security guard jobs to the Philippines.
Their website which claims they “create a solution that truly enhances safety without replacing human jobs”. This is quite the juxtaposition when you contrast it with their “Construction One Pager” with a quote from Melissa Ahrendt, Executive Director at Strafford Properties & Terminal South, “Undaunted does a better job at a fraction of the cost than any security guard firm I have worked with in my career.”
“The robots operate on the same schedule that a security guard would” says Dinner.
Their business is thriving, according to their him, while talking about car break-ins that were not prevented by his company on LinkedIn “What did the robots do to help? Actually not much...”
But, to be devils advocate, these robodogs can do more than just record what’s going on around them with AI enabled cameras, they also can do things that human security guards could never do. Their YouTube page is full of shorts demonstrating this:
So yes, the robodog can see, talk, listen, walk down stairs AND do TikTok dances.
If you weren’t stunned by now, let me show you one of the best capabilities that could never be matched by humans:
That’s right - I’d like to see a human close a door!
On a more serious note, there are real life consequences to outsourcing everything overseas, take for example, the experiences that children in the community will have.
No longer will they get to make a friend with a person making a decent wage as a security guard where they live. Now, they can make a ‘friend’ in the Philippines:
If that wasn’t dystopian enough, take this woman in the video below, who was having some sort of medical emergency. Instead of a human security guard who could maybe administered CPR or medical aid, she is stuck talking to a person overseas through the lenses of a robodog while she waits for medical aid.
The Undaunted worker, 8,700 miles away, at one points says “I’m just right here if you need help okay” and the woman, visibly upset, squeaks out “okay”. The video is disturbing as a note before you watch it:
There is also a short where the company kicks a man off the street who is just trying to rest.
The video says “the property” but it sure looks like a public sidewalk to me. Their website states that Undaunted “[uplifts] the communities we serve.” Sadly for this person, apparently they are no longer afforded the luxury of simply existing in this community.
But where does Flock come into this?
First, Flock’s CEO has invested directly in Undaunted, and Bryan’s LinkedIn is also filled with posts of him glazing Flock.
Apparently Flock’s Chief of Staff to their Chief Communications Officer Holly Beilin also shares her media tips with Undaunted.
His LinkedIn is full of posts like his recent series “”Questions for AI Video Geniuses“ “Why are camera systems not just dots tracking people across a property?”, and “Why can you not put cameras on a map and train it to say, think about the map spatially and create probabilities of showing up on the next camera... then yep, showed up on the next camera?” musing about how to track people using video surveillance.
This is a slightly different approach than Flock, who “says its cameras don’t track people. [Even though] its own training videos say otherwise.”
Bryan does have a bigger idea for the cameras on his Chinese robodogs though, after all, what’s the good of all this data you’re generating if you can’t harvest it and sell it to the State?
I started looking into this company when I miraculously got this email as part of an unrelated open records request because the Dunwoody Deputy PD Chief was CC’d:
If you didn’t know, Flock would be more than happy to suck up any video source through their platform FlockOS (like FUSUS, by Axon). This is how they integrated the private security cameras in the private business that a Flock VP logged into an watched remotely.
But this one email, while literally saying “robotic dogs/with FLOCK camera capability” wasn’t enough for me, so I started submitting open records requests to the Atlanta PD, where these things are widely deployed. After some back and forth with the wonderful Open Records Specialist, I was able to get a chain between Dinner and Marshall Freeman.
For context, “the city of Atlanta Ethics Office found Atlanta Police Department (APD) Chief Administrative Officer Marshall Freeman secretly worked as a consultant and booster for Fusus—a police technology company that powers the city’s Connect Atlanta surveillance camera network and real-time crime center (RTCC)” after some great investigative journalism from the Atlanta Community Press Collective.
In his email, Dinner states: “we would like to be able to share footage to the police through Fusus, Flock, or another simple way”.
And as if all this wasn’t enough, Fox5 in Atlanta reported “the founder of Undaunted says, down the road, the hope to work with the police department so they can see what the dogs see.”
Is this panopticon of surveillance the future we want? Is it ethical to outsource jobs overseas and harvest everyone’s data under the guise of public safety? Do the people creating these technologies, that live outside of our communities, really know more about us than we do?
This certainly isn’t the world I want my son to grow up in.
Israel has had a back door into all telecommunications in the U.S. since Clinton unzipped his pants for what’s her name.
I'll take living dogs any day. Do powerful water guns work on robotic dogs? Are they truly waterproof? If they fall over--say they trip on a rope--can they get themselves up? Or are they down for the count?