Humans’ best friends might be dogs, but dogs around the world could end up with some serious competition in the form of Koda’s AI-powered robot dog.

Unlike other robot dogs on the market, the Koda is meant to interact socially with its human owners. The robot’s AI helps it sense when its owner is sad, happy or excited so it can, over time, respond in an appropriate manner to human emotions.

This robot dog can be a companion, seeing-eye dog or guard dog, accomplishing tasks thanks to Koda’s “blockchain-enabled decentralized AI infrastructure” that enables it to process complex problems and even learn new skills.

Decentralized artificial intelligence, also often called distributed artificial intelligence, is a subfield of artificial intelligence research that focuses on the development of distributed solutions for problems.

Blockchain is a way of recording and storing information that makes it hard to change or hack a system. Blockchain doesn’t store any of its information in a central location. Instead, the blockchain is copied and spread across a network of computers, which ensures that all the robot’s data is secure, unlike the usual Internet of Things devices that are connected to a home network.

So in the most basic terms, Koda’s decentralized AI social robot dog can react to its human owners’ behaviors by using AI to learn and adapt along the way while keeping its data private and impossible to hack.

The Koda robot dog is equipped with 3D depth cameras located on the front, back and each side of the robot’s body. There’s even a 13-megapixel camera on the front of the robot to take high-quality photos.

The robot has a fully functional head and tail-piece and uses 14 high-torque motors with two motors on the neck for animal-like mobility. The pooch also has a high-resolution display and multiple sensors including a force foot sensor. The robot’s microphone array has 97 percent accuracy for voiceprint recognition.

The Koda is priced between US$45,000 and US$55,000.(SD-Agencies)