With Shanghai's latest lockdown comes this creepy robot creature scuttling through the empty streets

Shanghai is seeing a new Covid surge, reaching 9,000 cases on Sunday — a city record — with 268 daily cases that are symptomatic, according to Reuters. In a city of 26 million, that seems like a relatively low number of people actually feeling sick from the virus, but China is taking no chances.

In step with their zero-tolerance stance on Covid, the city is on lockdown, and its abandoned streets look eerie, to say the least. But what turns it into a scene from a dystopian nightmare (or an "adorable" sight, as some feel), is this scuttling robot creature roaming the streets. Similar to the Boston Dynamic dog that patrolled Singapore in the early days of the pandemic, this four-legged robot enforces stay-at-home measures by blasting health announcements through a loudspeaker. Fortunately that's all it does, for now.

Originally posted on Twitter: