SPOT the robot dog sniffs around ancient Pompeii. Does it matter that he has neither head nor nose? Nope. SPOT can still find problems in the obliterated old city.

You can find Pompeii in present-day Italy. A nearby volcano, Mount Vesuvius, erupted there in A.D. 79. It completely wiped out Pompeii—and the 30,000 people who lived there—in just 25 hours. That’s astonishing. But this makes archaeologists unable to resist the site: Ash and mud preserved Pompeii. The remains buried underneath tell us what it was like there nearly 2,000 years ago. It’s a city frozen in history. Well, more like ashed in history.

Archaeologists aren’t the only ones curious to know what lies under the dust. Looters—people looking for ancient artifacts to steal—have dug their own tunnels through Pompeii over the years. Many of these tunnels aren’t safe. They can collapse and injure visitors and archaeologists.

But they won’t hurt SPOT. The four-legged robot, designed by Boston Dynamics, will patrol Pompeii at nighttime. He’ll inspect the smallest of spaces. He’ll gather data for fixing safety and structural issues.

Regular dogs boast an extraordinary sense of smell. SPOT can’t actually smell, of course. He’s more of a watchdog. The robo-dog’s makers outfitted him with a 360-degree camera. SPOT will even look out for illegal relic hunters.

Pompeii also has its own eye in the sky, a Leica BLK2FLY flying laser scanner. The scanner takes 3-D scans of the ruins all by itself. Go, sky fly! Go, robot dog!

Why? Pompeii shows us “there is nothing new under the Sun.” People back then were a lot like us!