Robot horse opens JD pre-orders, but 'rideable by everyone' is still far off

Today I scrolled through my Moments feed and saw someone sharing photos from the World Robot Conference. A quadruped robot horse with a saddle was carrying a person across the exhibition floor, surrounded by a crowd filming with their phones. My immediate thought went back to a scene I saw last month at a robot experience store: the demo quadruped robot dog crashed and rebooted just trying to cross a threshold. An engineer rushed out from the back office, crouched down, and patted its back shell—it looked no different than coaxing an old router.