Hi, please post your questions in the weekly sticky thread $1

I live in an area where GPS is effectively useless, and it is not like I am in the middle of nowhere or a third world country. I live in a 60,000 person city in Southern Ontario, we are well served by local phone companies but GPS with both phones and the Garmin handheld GPS devices are largely useless in accurately navigating in my community, it is pretty well known that you just don't leave Geocaches in my area. How would the robot function if there is no GPS signal or the GPS signal is giving it a lot of conflicting information like that it thinks you are jumping between a distance of a couple blocks multiple times a minute. GPS is also less reliable in forest settings especially after a rainfall because the signal bounces around the water droplets scattering the signal, Further trails often have steep drop offs that might not have barriers denoting their existence, how would the robot recognize these drop offs with so much debris on the ground?

Honestly I would feel safer with my dog than a robot just because I have had countless of my technologies fail me, and if this robot fails there is a high chance of severe injury or death. I can feel through the harness that my dog is distracted or seems less sure of a decision. Computers tend to either pause or run their programing until something stops them. My dog will slow down if she is struggling to find a drop off or if she is deciding if something needs to be brought to my attention so that I can stop and sus it out myself. Would the robot just walk me off the drop off if is less obvious that there is a drop off rather than slowing down?

Additionally, I am very interested in dog sports and as an individual who has trained my first dog and is working on training my second the sports are a hobby that I am in the process of investigating what accommodations can be made so I can do them. I would likely have a dog regardless, and with my history with technology there is a 99% chance I would just become frustrated with the robot if not my strange magical ability to break literally anything that has electricity running through it I would probably be sending it in for repairs every second week unlike my dog who honestly just has wellness visits twice a year because I prefer to be extra dilligent.