This week, Boston Dynamics introduced a robot dog that opens doors. A video produced by the company (above) has become popular online. For many, seeing Spot Mini not only opening a door, but giving a hand to his robot pal has raised concerns about the correlation between employment and robotics.

The company is a spinoff of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), but in 2014 was purchased by Google, and later by the Japanese company SoftBank. They have been developing robots that perform pragmatic tasks like opening a door, or robots just to keep people company. According to Carnegie Mellon robot expert Chris Atkeson, pragmatic activities by robots will increase exponentially and Boston Dynamics will be one of the leaders of the field.

The company's door-opening robot "could be very useful for logistics, such as delivering packages from trucks to the door. It could be used for environmental cleanup, such as picking up litter," Atkeson said. "I expect a version with multiple arms (and) possibly with different functions."