This is the hilarious moment a cleaning robot that spends all day vacuuming up after a family's pet dog took revenge - by biting its tail.

The shocked hound then lept up and tried to escape but failed miserably as the robotic cleaner remained firmly chewing on the animal's long white tail as it yelped and barked in terror.

The incident unfolded while the residents were away from their house in the city of Taiyuan in Shanxi province, northern China, on January 1.

CCTV footage shows the Samoyed dog by the door waiting for its owners to return home and watching the robotic cleaner busily at work cleaning up the floor.

After completing the living room, the robotic cleaner seemingly set its sights on the dog and made a beeline for the dosing animal.

The dog initially ignored the robot as it made its way around presumably cleaning up hair, then decided to tackle the problem at source, by trying to clean up the dog as well and seemingly chomping onto its tail.

As the video ends, the dog appears to have given up while cowering in the corner with the robotic cleaner still chewing on its tail. It remained like that until the owner turned up almost an hour later.

The owner later said that the robot had sucked hair from the dog's tail into its cleaning device and refused to let go, making it seem as if it had bitten the dog's tail. With no humans around, they were not able to turn off the device and it became stuck in the robot's teeth.

According to reports, the dog was in good condition since the roller brush that had grabbed the dog's tail was made of silicone.

However, the owner said the animal was now a lot more nervous about the robotic cleaner than it had been before.

Samoyed pooches are medium-sized herding dogs with thick, white, double-layer coats.

One of the most well-known robot cleaners is the Roomba, made by American firm iRobot.