Buying a security robot dog in the UK: budgets, the specification to write, and the questions to ask a supplier

It depends on which of three classes you are buying, and only the cheapest class has a published price. Unitree lists the Go2 Air at US$1,600, the Go2 Pro at US$2,800 and the Go2 X at US$4,500, excluding tax and freight, with the EDU variant on request (unitree.com list prices, read on 22 September 2026); those are consumer and education platforms with no published ingress rating, and Unitree’s own manual says they are not waterproof. The industrial class, the Unitree B2, DEEP Robotics X30, Boston Dynamics Spot and ANYbotics ANYmal, is quoted per project and none of the makers publishes a UK price. Between the two sits the wheel-legged Lynx M20 from DEEP Robotics, also unpriced. Any UK figure you are given for the industrial class is a quotation, not a list price, and should be read with its scope: robot, payload, dock, software, training and support are often separate lines.

Two things move the number more than the badge. The payload, because a thermal and zoom camera unit can be a significant fraction of the robot’s own price, and the operating model, because a robot that patrols unattended needs a dock, software and integration that a demonstration unit does not. Our running-cost guide sets the whole cost of ownership out line by line.

A specification that a supplier can bid against, and that stops the demonstration-class platform being sold for an industrial job, needs eleven lines. Write the number you need for each, from your site, before you read any brochure.

The specification tells you what you need; these questions tell you whether the supplier can deliver it in the UK. A supplier who cannot answer them in writing is selling you a robot, not a patrol.

This table is organised by what a buyer needs to know rather than by what the robot does. The performance figures, weight, payload, endurance, stairs, are in the platform comparison and are not repeated here. Every cell is the maker’s own published position as read on 22 September 2026; “not published” means no official page states it.

Pilot first, in almost every case. A security robot dog is a new operating model as much as a purchase, and the questions that decide whether it works, false-alarm rate, operator workload, docking in your weather, integration with your control room, cannot be answered from a specification. A bounded pilot with an exit condition answers them for a fraction of the purchase price. After that, purchase is the normal route for a platform that has proved itself on a stable route, while hire or subscription suits a site that wants an outcome rather than an asset, a platform that is changing quickly, or a budget that is operating rather than capital. Not every platform is offered on every model in the UK, which is one of the things we settle in scoping. How to trial a quadruped without buying one sets out the routes, and Robotics-as-a-Service explains the subscription model.

The same ones as CCTV, applied to a camera that moves, plus the work-equipment rules that apply to any machine on a site. A patrol robot with cameras is a video surveillance system under UK GDPR: the Information Commissioner’s Office publishes guidance on video surveillance, and a data protection impact assessment is required in most cases, with Article 35 of the UK GDPR naming large-scale systematic monitoring of a publicly accessible area explicitly. Where contracted rather than in-house staff use the robot’s cameras to identify people or monitor their activities in order to guard premises, those staff need an SIA public space surveillance (CCTV) licence. The robot itself is work equipment under PUWER 1998 and the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974, which means a risk assessment, defined operating zones and a responsible person. None of this stops a deployment. All of it belongs in the specification, so that the supplier prices for it and the pilot plan includes it from day one. The operating side, from survey to monitoring to response, is on our robot security patrols page.