“Robot dogs”

yes actually

I would suggest the characters of your story try to avoid the robot dogs, rather than try to fight them. These things are covered in cameras, the whole point of them at a protest or demonstration is to identify and deanonymize demonstrators, and to be a literally walking casus belli for the cops to start using violence once someone kicks or hits the robot. It's not the Terminator, it's a remote controlled camera.

Here are some handy recommendations for attack vectors that have actually worked against real robot dogs.

Spamming random code broadcasts on 433 MHz to shut them down. (Flipper zero, or even just a garage door opener depending on how shitty your robodogs are). However, most of them also have 2.4 GHz, 5 GHz, and LTE antennas, so good luck actually getting a deauth attack or other DoS attack. You might just get lucky and send the "off" rolling code, though.

Tripwires or bolas to trip and entangle them.

Cargo net, they cannot disentangle themselves.

Big magnet and some rope, just lift them up off of the ground or keep them chained to a certain spot.

Jam sticks into the leg joints to make the motors shred them up and then overload protection will shut the joints down to prevent them from burning out against the resistance of the wood chips stuck inside.

You're absolutely not going to be able to generate an EMP large enough or find a magnet strong enough to damage one remotely. A Carrington-like solar storm or nuclear weapon are the only options that would do this. The EM testing devices they use to inspect things like airplanes or military vehicles are orders of magnitude less powerful, yet very nearly as unobtainable as a nuclear warhead.

Kicking it or hitting it with a bat might dent its chassis but will absolutely not be an effective strategy for disabling it, they're specifically designed to resist that sort of attack. See: a hundred videos of Boston Dynamics employees kicking and beating the shit out of the robot as hard as they can, and the robot immediately recovering without any problems.

Shooting it is also a bad idea. Consider that most scenarios in which you'd want to try that would then involve significant collateral damage to you and your side when the lithium pack goes off. If you're close enough to shoot the battery of a moving robot dog, you're close enough to get severely injured by the battery.

https://hexbear.net/post/261184?scrollToComments=false

Distract them with a robot squirrel.

Any type of beverage or liquid I imagine

Wait actually I guess you’d first have to corrode the exterior which makes me think some kind of acid

I’d have to brush up on my very basic chemistry, but these are great things to think about

Emp shockwave? I think there’s a way to make one from just power transformers around town. But I’m not sure, I could have just made that up because I can’t remember where I heard it.

Maybe this might work?

After your net or whatever, then Faraday cage it and put it in a large box then pour concrete.