Bittle, An Affordable Dynamic Miniature Robotic Dog Kit

Inventor Rongzhong Li of Petoi, who previously created an absolutely adorable open source robotic kitten kit “Nybble”, has followed up with a canine version named “Bittle”. Like its feline counterpart, Bittle comes as a puzzle kit to assemble. Bittle was also built on an open source platform, runs on an Arduino microcontroller that coordinates a wide range of dynamic movements, can be upgraded with additional chips to enhance perception and decision-making, and can be controlled through a smartphone app using a Bluetooth dongle.

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. It’s designed to lower the technical and cost barrier of expensive dynamic robots for the use of schools, research, and family activities.

The petite Bittle looks palm-sized version of the Boston Dynamics four-legged robot “Spot” and can even do some of Spot’s tricks, albeit on a much smaller scale.

Bittle is 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 company is raising funds through Kickstarter in order to bring Bittle to market.

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.