Petoi Bittle – a programmable robot dog | Hacker News Reader

Petoi Bittle – a programmable robot dog

petoi.com

71 pointsmetalwhale52 comments

I was looking at https://www.unitree.com/go2/ recently, which seems rather good value I thought.

Some of the videos look really impressive, such as the back flips, climbing stairs and the lidar

They do look impressive but the videos are all 3D graphics rather than real. The texture on the robot body and shadows are the giveaway.

Interesting, I didn't actually realise that. Will await to see some reviews :)

I'm not sure why do you feel that's the case. It doesn't look like cgi at all and if it is shadows and reflections are flawless so the whole video including a person and lawns would need to be generated. I can't imagine how anyone could create it. Honestly building a robot seems easier than faking it to this level of accuracy.

Check out the one with a mounted flashlight, laser .... and flamethrower:

https://img-9gag-fun.9cache.com/photo/a2vNP3w_460svav1.mp4

Also CGI?

Looks like a cool platform, but you won't be paying $1600 USD https://shop.unitree.com/en-gb/products/unitree-go2?variant=... :

> $1,600.00 USD

> Shipping costs $399 per unit, Remote Countries $500-$1000

> Not include customs duties, Please comply with local customs laws pay customs duties and clear the goods

By the time you are done, you will be paying between $2000 and $3500 for the base model. It might still represent good value, but it's still more than it is advertised.

> Shipping costs $399 per unit

Do they send it by pack mule or something?

To be fair, I have seen with some of these robotics platforms they send them by air in a pelican case [1] with custom cut foam inserts. The price for shipping racks up quickly.

[1] https://www.pelican.com/products/cases/

$1600 version is just a remote control toy. If you want the ROS programmable version it's around 10k.

They have a repository on GH with some of their projects code. The OpenCat page also contains information on how to calibrate the servos using a serial monitor, so that one isn't dependent on their phone app. Good! https://github.com/PetoiCamp

Now, what about an updated meow/purr version for us cat lovers?:)

Looks like they also have a robot cat https://www.petoi.com/products/petoi-nybble-robot-cat

Yes, I already noticed, but it looks a lot less polished than the dog, and is also more expensive. Probably an older product with higher prices, that's why I would welcome an updated version.

We will roll out a newer version of robot cat around July. If you are interested in getting a notification, you can subscribe to our newsletter via our website.

Because all of Petoi robots run on OpenCat, our users have created alternative ways to control Petoi robots: use XBox controller - https://www.petoi.camp/forum/general-discussions/using-xbox-... Web API - https://www.petoi.camp/forum/software/web-api-to-control-nyb...

I got one of these when I backed them on Kickstarter. It was a fun build and works well. I gave it to one of my neighbors' kids since I didn't really see myself using it all that much, and he enjoys it.

How old do you think kids have to be to engage with this? Considering buying one for my grandson who is pretty into legos/tech/etc. but is only 7

Just playing around with it with the remote they don’t have to be older than maybe in elementary school like my neighbors kid. If you mean assembly and doing some programming I would think middle school with an adults help for a few steps in assembly. Some of the toughest assembly is getting the wiring to go through to where everything can close properly, otherwise not too bad.

Normally, we recommend users to be 10+ years old. But if you are already experienced with coding, you can help your grandson get started with block-based coding(https://www.petoi.camp/forum/software/web-api-to-control-nyb...) after he builds the robot.

He can also code some simple commands to move servos just with the mobile app: https://docs.petoi.com/mobile-app/controller#customized-comm...

He can even make a Petoi robot sing some melodies: https://docs.petoi.com/applications/melody-creation

Here's an example of running a Raspberry on Bittle robot dog https://gitlab.com/sdv.bot/bittle: "Attempts to get SOAFEE Software Defined Vehicle architecture working on the Petoi Bittle robot. Tested on Raspberry 5 w/ 8GB." So instead of running on a real(much more expensive) vehicle, Darwin Sanoy experimented with running SOAFEE on Bittle.

Ok but it doesnt say anywhere on that page what you can do with the basic package?

It's a programmable robot dog that you can program in C++/Python/block-based coding. You can check the application links on the side bar menu at https://docs.petoi.com/

Ok thanks but what exactly can it do? Can it respond to commands and move accordingly? I am just a little confused how there isn't much immediate information about the capabilities of the robot, other than it's programmable. Programmable how? What's the trigger of the programming? What are some use cases?

You can control the robot with the included remote control or the Petoi mobile app with 35+ built-in commands. We have the APIs through OpenCat(https://github.com/PetoiCamp/OpenCat). You can control every servo movement via coding. You can program the robot to move around and perform new skills to mimic a real dog's behaviors.

The overview page has more information: https://www.petoi.com/pages/bittle-open-source-bionic-robot-...

Is it just me, or is $269 monstrously expensive for some injection moulded plastic, plastic geared servo motors, an arduino compatible board, a battery and some connectivity modules?

I presume the value is in the associated open source software. You could obviously build your own for less in hardware costs, but once you've put in the effort of doing so, you will have spent far more of your time on the project than the cost of the ready-made product. You're paying for the bundling and the convenience.

The Sony Aibo harkens back to the late 1990s. It was (roughly) the same, but cost >$2000 in 1990s dollars. TLDR: It's not expensive.

A luxury product for early adopters that looks great and works out of the box does not seem roughly the same to me than a device you still ultimately have to calibrate, expand (the default model of this doesn't even have a camera iirc) and program loads to do anything.

There's also PuppyPi which looks quite a bit more solid (but is also more expensive)

https://www.hiwonder.com/products/puppypi?variant=3977603314...

Unitree Go2 for $1600 is wildly capable.

https://www.unitree.com/go2

Have you used it? What was the experience getting it into the US?

The bill of materials might not come close to that number, but materials are not the only cost when creating a hardware product. In your end price you need to factor in stuff like time spent on research, designing, testing, prototyping, writing & debugging software. Then there's manufacturing, packaging, storage, marketing and probably others. When you take all these into account plus the fact that this will not sell in millions of units, the price suddenly doesn't seem that high.

And from a consumer point of view - a very technical person could probably pull off something similar to this, but the amount of hours a project like this would take a single person is probably in the hundreds and you would not approach the quality of this unless you invested a lot of money into equipment (assuming you don't own high quality 3d printers and other things required to build this).

Our first robot Nybble cat was born as a maker project https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/nybble-world-s-cutest-ope... with crowdfunding in 2018.

Bittle was also born from our crowdfunding project on Kickstarter https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/petoi/bittle in 2020.

You can read about our history there.

In addition to the points you raised, one of the big challenges is to manage the supply chain and the bill of materials. For example, during covid, we faced the challenges of chip shortage.

For any hobbyist project, people don't really need to worry about things at scale.

bro how much did you pay for your car that is presumably around 1000kg?

I'm not sure that is a good comparison. My old car cost ~$500 and weighed about 1000kg. If anything that is a comment on consumerism and not the value of things.

The value of this platform comes from the R&D, scale, support, packaged software, etc, etc.

Assuming they sell 10000 units at an average ~$300. At that scale likely a $100 of each unit is in parts/tooling, then assembly/flashing/testing. That's approximately $20mn to be split by:

1. Likely minimum team of 10 people on development for 4 years, at ~$100k per year (with overheads), for $4mn. Kickstarter in 2020: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/petoi/bittle

2. Investors probably threw in $4mn along the way and look to claw that back (couldn't find investment info on a quick search).

3. Tax appears to be ~20% in most places, so 20% of $30mn is $6mn.

Leaving approximately $6mn, everybody gets a bump and they are left with enough to expand and run the company for ~2-4 years without needing to raise additional investment. That's a lot of pressure to get a new product out there.

If you sell hw products and you're not charging at least 4x parts costs you will go bankrupt.

Your parent should really check out the BOM on his iPhone or MacBook before complaining about $270 being "monstrously expensive" hardware. And all those gadgets benefit from high volume discounts on parts, decades of sunk R&D costs and the volume economies of scale, assembled by sweatshop workers, not niche low volume production runs for enthusiasts like this one.

The price of Pizza at your local non-fast-food restaurant is also significantly higher than that of the bulk raw ingredients it's made of. Now also try adding the R&D costs of inventing the Pizza to that see where that gets you.

she doesn't have an iPhone or a MacBook because I do think they're expensive. I buy my phones used on eBay and cringe if they cost more than £50

How you feel about your SO's phone pricing is besides the point.

The point was that you don't understand the distinction between the retail price of a product and raw BOM costs.

Please read the comments here trying to educate you.

what do you mean about my SO? I was referring to myself

Sorry but you did refer to yourself at the third person as "she", so how was anyone supposed to know?

I was correcting "his iPhone or MacBook"

I still don't get it. Everyone here is male. Right?

Could be, but here I identify as strong independent Asian woman.

Cool. I identify as a giant robot super monster cat.

> I buy my phones used on eBay and cringe if they cost more than £50

I'm with you on this one, sister.

Don't even get me started on the kid down the street selling lemonade...

Similar to how software engineers get paid $1000s just to keep hitting the keyboard.

Hey! Those keys are small! And there are so many!

Excellent business opportunity for someone with your knowledge

I wouldn't say it is monstrously expensive, but it is kind of underwhelming at that price point. It doesn't even have three degrees of freedom on its legs, which is what I would expect on a basic quadruped.

It's a tradeoff with size. It's very hard to squeeze shoulder servos in and keep it that small.

Bittle has a tiny body, but it has strong and fast servos for running and even backflipping(check this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRE-sp05ia8&list=TLGG0bKEfuY...). We custom-designed our own high-quality servos which are half of the prices of any comparable servos.

We already had a prototype with 3 degrees of freedom on the legs. But the structural complexity and price would have increased substantially. We are not releasing it at this moment.

You can check Petoi robot joint index documentation at https://docs.petoi.com/petoi-robot-joint-index

Kind of, compared to high-volume products most consumers are used to see. R&D gets expensive fast.

Just try designing these up to first partial prototype and try calculating cumulative man-hour spent x local minimum wages x highly optimistic sales^-1 = pure R&D cost per unit before any manufacturing or even design reviews. It's not going to make a lot of commercial sense.

3D printing people sometimes says dollar stores makes them feel defeated. I'm not yet at that level but it's true, a 10-pack ball point pens at $1 makes very little sense if you knew.

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