Put another way, the Mars dog will walk off-leash. Fittingly, the robot dog experiments are being called the LASSIE (Legged Autonomous Surface Science in Analog Environments) Project. A video shared with Popular Science of the dog-bot, shows the petite black-and-white robot dog named Spirit tip-tapping its feet across the vast, sandy landscape. “It’s the next frontier and takes advantage of the unique capabilities of legged robots.”Why choose a robot dog? The end goal is developing a robot dog worthy of the name Lassie.