Looking for Quadruped friends? Join "The Dog Pound animal control for Stray robot dogs" slack group:
https://join.slack.com/t/robotdogs/shared_invite/zt-24ep8mqn4-1p42Aq7owRv9klLI~3C5Pw
- So you want to get a robot dog!?
- But why?
- Boston Dynamics
- DARPA
- MIT Cheetah
- Cheetah's from China
- Other open source dogs and cats
- My current, and future purchases
- Post purchase wrap up
I did too, so I stopped talking about it, and made it happen.
Ask Hackaday: What good is a robot dog?
I remember seeing Big Dog, "The first legged robot to leave the lab" on Hackaday. I always had high hopes that one day the technology would be smaller, or at least more affordable. That day is here for the most part, however the "affordable" part is of course still a bit subjective.
Although "affordable", and Boston Dynamics generally don't belong in the same sentence, Boston Dynamics has of course been a very critical part of bringing these quadruped technology advances to light the entire time. Evolution of Boston Dynamic’s Robots(1992-2022).
As impressive as all the Boston Dynamics robots are, I personally only payed attention to a few milestones. Cheetah was the first concept that really caught my eye. The press at that time was claiming it could move faster than Usain Bolt.
Similarly Cheetah's cousin WildCat from Boston Dynamics brought new found speeds to unleashed, outdoor quadrupeds.
DARPA helped both the Boston Dynamics, and MIT quadruped "Cheetah" programs gain legs metaphorically speaking. The Maximum Mobility and Manipulation (M3) and Machine Common Sense (MCS) programs directly funded both efforts.
In a paper titled "Design principles for highly efficient quadrupeds and implementation on the MIT Cheetah robot" the design features for MIT Cheetah hardware were "presented", "as an embodiment" of the principles within the paper itself. At that time the MIT Cheetah was "the second fastest legged robot in the world", of course, second to Boston Dynamics Cheetah.
Early versions of MIT Cheetah were still well with in the class I would consider inaccessable, and were very much academic.
"Quadruped Bounding Control with Variable Duty Cycle via Vertical Impulse Scaling"
From this snapshot in time forward however, things started becoming more "accessible"!
"MIT Cheetah 3: Design and Control of a Robust, Dynamic Quadruped Robot"
"Mini Cheetah: A Platform for Pushing the Limits of Dynamic Quadruped Control"
"A low cost modular actuator for dynamic robots"
Once the dogs were open sourced... China latched on, instantly bringing options to Alibaba.
Ben Katz was of course pivitol in the open source efforts. His Hobbyking Cheetah was the prototype for the Mini Cheetah. "Hobbyking_Cheetah_Compact: 3-phase motor controller with integrated position sensor"
At some point the nomenclature bounced back and forth between dogs, and big cats.. they seem to be fairly interchangable, however "dog" seems to be taking precedence.
To come full circle on the subjective "affordable" dogs, meet MJbots quad: An open-source, affordable, dynamic quadruped robot
So which pooch did I get? Well I couldn't decide, so I got two! I'll probably buy a third soon. Oh, and a robotic arm! The first two I'm importing are the Xiaomi Cyberdog, and the Unitree Go1.
The third pooch I seek to obtain is the DeepRobotics Jueying Lite2. These 3 dogs seem to be cornering the market for the moment in the "affordable" range.
Ghost Robotics Vision 60, and Boston Spot being the next logical choices for many situations.
Sorry Aibo! You are still a toy pup, after all these years.
FedEx Total Duties, Tax, Customs, Other Fees - $1379.81
Alibaba Wire Transfer - $5912.50 (single transaction, subject to more customs scrutiny)
Total: $7292.31
https://github.com/MAVProxyUser/XiaomiCyberDog-k91
DHL Import Duty total - $405.13
Alibaba Wire Transfer x 2, total $8805
- Payment 1 - $4000
- Payment 2 - $4805
Total: $9210.13