Geekery: I Welcome Our Adorable Tiny Robot Dog Overlords
This cute, palm sized robot pooch takes some cues from Boston Dynamics, but won’t cost you tens of thousands of dollars.
Petoi inventor Rongzhong Li created an open source kitten called Nybble last year that’s body is made of laser cut wood. This new little dog is made of tougher plastic and offers some upgrades.
Bittle is a little robot dog with amazing maneuverability. It’s a kit for people to assemble and can be programmed to do lifelike tricks…. a palm-sized robot that moves with four legs rather than wheels. Legged motion gives it more freedom to navigate unstructured terrains, and expresses the joy of life whenever it moves. Such dynamic maneuverability was only seen on a few luxury robots from the best labs or tycoon companies. We came up with a grassroots solution to simplify the system to make it affordable and mass-producible.
The fun in this also includes its puzzle like build – a thing I think Lego builders will appreciate. Bittle is built on an open source platform using an Arduino microcontroller for its wide range of movements, it’s upgradable, and you can control it with a smartphone app. It’s a tough little bot, too. It has all terrain capabilities and can take being stepped on.
The core kit includes everything you need to build Bittle; and the Kickstarter campaign offers add ons like extra sensors, a camera, and a servo pack to upgrade its functions.
Raspberry Pi 3 A+ and Pi camera upgrade – you have to admit, a tiny dog robot carrying modules in its mouth is pretty cute.
It’s definitely inspired by Spot, the helper robot made by Boston Dynamics – but with the average household budget in mind.
Our mission is to bring affordable robotic pets from fiction to reality. We grew from a single maker to a company that can collaborate and negotiate with manufacturers to get the best solutions to our needs. We have many more cool ideas in mind, and Bittle is another small step towards our ideal shape of household robots.
Bittle Kit (Kickstarter Special) – $225
- Plastic body parts
- 10× P1S Servo
- Rechargeable 7.4V Li-ion battery pack
- NyBoard V1
- Bluetooth and WiFi dongles
If you have $74,500+ to drop and you’re wanting something that can pull a rickshaw, you can buy the full sized version here.
