Sometimes the Dog Can Play With the Robot

Modern technology is very good at manufacturing guilt. The device that saves you time can also make you wonder whether you were supposed to be doing the thing yourself. Automatic feeders raise questions about mealtime. Pet cameras let us check in from somewhere else, which is useful right up until we start wondering whether checking in counts as being there. Now Cheerble has updated one of its interactive dog toys so the dog can chase something that moves on its own, and the obvious cultural question arrives almost immediately: are we really starting to automate playing with the dog?

Yes, a little. That may be fine.

Cheerble launched Wickedbone Air on Sept. 11, a redesigned version of the app-controlled Wickedbone it introduced in 2018. The toy looks roughly like a futuristic bone on wheels and can be controlled through the company’s mobile app. In Drive Mode, an owner uses a virtual joystick to steer it in real time, changing direction in response to the dog’s movement. In Auto Mode, the toy uses built-in movement patterns and touch responses so play can continue without the owner continuously directing every turn. Cheerble still tells owners to remain nearby and supervise, which is an important distinction: this is not being sold as something you switch on before leaving for work and trust to raise the dog until dinner.

The company is also making a deliberate point of keeping the person in the loop. Its launch materials describe Wickedbone Air as a way to make shared play easier, not as a replacement for it. Drive Mode exists specifically because the owner is supposed to participate, and the redesign combines that with the option to hand over some of the repetitive motion when needed. The toy can make sounds, continue an automatic session even if the Bluetooth connection drops, and can be located under furniture through a sound cue in the app. It weighs 8.7 ounces, 54 grams less than the original model, and uses a replaceable E-TPU outer shell intended to absorb impact and reduce noise on hard floors.

Those are product details, but the more interesting thing is the compromise built into the design. Cheerble is not really asking pet owners to choose between “play with your dog” and “let a machine do it.” It is offering both modes because real households rarely operate at ideological extremes. Sometimes you want to sit on the floor and actively engage. Sometimes you are making dinner, answering an email, folding laundry, recovering from a long day or trying to finish a conversation while a dog has decided this is the precise moment when the entire household should become a chase arena.

Human parents have understood this arrangement for a long time. Putting a child in front of a screen for a little while so somebody can cook, shower or complete a task does not automatically mean the parent has outsourced childhood. It means attention is finite and households require triage. Pet owners are allowed the same basic mercy. A machine taking one round of fetch or chase does not mean the dog has been reassigned to the Department of Robotics.

That distinction is especially useful because pet technology has already moved far beyond simple convenience gadgets. Connected feeders can measure portions and track when an animal eats. Microchip pet doors can recognize individual animals, impose curfews and tell owners when pets enter or leave. Cameras such as Furbo let owners see and speak to pets remotely and toss treats through an app. Petcube has long sold cameras with built-in laser toys that can be manually controlled from a phone or placed into an autoplay mode when the owner is busy. We have been delegating fragments of pet care to devices for years. Play only feels different because it belongs more obviously to the emotional side of the relationship.

Feeding can be framed as logistics. A door is access control. A camera is monitoring. Play is companionship, which makes automation sound more intimate. The fear is not really that a rolling plastic bone will become too entertaining. It is that a series of useful substitutions could eventually add up to the owner being less present while the technology becomes more present.

That is a reasonable boundary to think about, but boundaries work better when they are based on actual use rather than the mere existence of a machine. A toy that occupies a dog for ten minutes while someone makes dinner is not the same thing as a lifestyle in which the dog’s exercise, play, feeding, observation and interaction are all delegated because the animal has become another system to manage. The device is not the relationship. The pattern around the device is what matters.

Wickedbone Air is interesting because the product itself seems to acknowledge that tension. Cheerble could have presented autonomous play as the entire point, but instead it emphasizes the owner-controlled mode and describes the toy as a way for people and dogs to play together. The automatic setting is there as another option rather than the final evolutionary stage of pet ownership. Even the company’s instruction that owners remain nearby in Auto Mode keeps the technology in the category of supervised enrichment instead of unattended pet babysitting.

There are also practical reasons automated movement can be useful that have nothing to do with laziness. Not every owner has the same mobility. Not every dog is satisfied by the same kind of activity. Some people can comfortably steer a toy from a chair when repeatedly throwing a ball would be difficult. An interactive device can offer novelty on a rainy day, give a dog another outlet during recovery from a human’s injury, or provide a few additional minutes of stimulation after the owner has already done the walk, the training session and the customary negotiation over why the squirrel outside is not invited inside.

This is where the language around “pet parents” can sometimes become unfairly demanding. Once pets are described as family — accurately, for many households — every technological convenience can begin to sound like a moral test. Did you use an automatic feeder because it is practical or because you do not care enough to scoop kibble? Did you check the camera because you miss the dog or because you left the dog alone? Did the toy move itself because enrichment is good or because you could not be bothered? The same device can support care or substitute for it depending on how it is used, and most people live somewhere in the unremarkable middle.

That middle is getting technologically crowded. Sure Petcare sells connected feeders that record eating habits and pet doors that can be locked remotely. Furbo’s current cameras combine video, two-way audio, treat tossing and AI-generated activity insights. Petcube combines monitoring with remotely controlled or automatic laser play. Cheerble’s own product line includes balls and other toys designed to roll, wobble or react without a person physically moving them. Pet technology is gradually assembling a parallel infrastructure around the animal: feeding, movement, access, observation, health signals and entertainment can all now be mediated by apps and sensors.

The useful question is therefore not whether any one of those functions should ever be automated. We already answered that in practice. Millions of households use timers, cameras, doors and dispensers because they solve ordinary problems. The better question is which parts of the relationship people still want to experience directly, and whether the technology leaves room for them to do so.

On that measure, Wickedbone Air is less ominous than the broad idea of “automated play” sounds. Drive Mode turns the phone into a remote control and keeps the owner actively involved in the dog’s response. Auto Mode handles the toy’s movement when constant input is not convenient. The two modes can exist in the same afternoon. You can steer the ridiculous little bone around the living room yourself, hand the movement off while you answer the door, then take control again when the dog is still looking for trouble twenty minutes later.

That may actually be a more realistic model for pet technology than the grander promises of full automation. Good tools do not necessarily replace a relationship; they absorb friction around it. Automatic feeders make scheduled meals easier. Pet doors reduce the need to physically operate a door every time an animal wants through. Cameras provide information when a person cannot be home. A self-moving toy can add stimulation during the gaps when the human has another job to do.

There is still a line somewhere. If every interaction is optimized away, the convenience has consumed the point of having a companion animal in the first place. Dogs do not simply need motion in the abstract. They respond to people, routines, voices, touch, training, shared attention and all the social weirdness that develops between an animal and a household. No amount of autonomous wobbling changes that.

But most products do not force us to cross that line. They give us options, and then we decide what kind of household to build around them.

Wickedbone Air launches at an introductory price of $59.99, with a listed MSRP of $65.99. Replacement outer shells are sold separately for $19.99, which is another small but sensible part of the design: the piece the dog actually abuses can be replaced without throwing away the electronics inside. Cheerble says the toy’s Bluetooth control range is 20 to 50 meters depending on the environment, and the automatic mode continues even if the phone disconnects after play has started.

None of those specifications settle the philosophical question of how much technology belongs between a person and a pet. They do, however, make the product easier to understand for what it is: an interactive toy with both shared and semi-automatic modes, not a mechanical substitute for owning a dog.

And perhaps pet owners do not need to treat every convenience as an accusation. We automate parts of our own lives constantly. Dishwashers wash dishes we could wash ourselves. Robot vacuums cross floors we are perfectly capable of vacuuming. Parents occasionally let a screen occupy a child because dinner still has to get made. None of those decisions prove that the human has withdrawn from the relationship or responsibility around the task.

Sometimes the dog wants to play at exactly the moment the human needs ten minutes.

Now the dog can play with the robot for a little while but you should probably still throw the ball later.

SOURCE NOTES

• Cheerble — “Cheerble Launches Wickedbone Air with App-Controlled Play and a Replaceable E-TPU Shell,” Sept. 11, 2026
• Cheerble — Wickedbone Air product page
• Cheerble — original Wickedbone product page
• Petcube — Petcube Play interactive pet camera and autoplay laser toy
• Furbo — interactive pet cameras, treat tossing and connected pet-care features
• Sure Petcare — Microchip Pet Feeder Connect
• Sure Petcare — Microchip Pet Door Connect