MiniPupper: A High Tech Robot Dog!
The moment I see any project involving a robot with personality, I’m sold. In hindsight, that love probably stems from having a Tiger Poo-Chi as a kid. The MiniPupper Robot Dog Kit is the Poo-Chi of 2022 and is ready for adoption! It’s a simplified version of the Boston Dynamics Spot – a quadrupedal robot with a distrust of banana peels. Unfortunately, Spot comes with a hefty $75,000 price tag but you can now get your own lovable robot dog for a fraction of that cost from Tindie seller MangDang.
There are four different kits available, with two options including differing levels of assembly completed ahead of time depending on the users’ interest. The system uses a Raspberry Pi 4B (2G) as the brains, and includes a single-lens camera for image processing and a mini LCD on the front for customization and endless interactivity possibilities! The creators have even built their own custom high-torque 9g servos for the project, giving the MiniPupper an impressive 12 degrees of freedom.
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MangDang has also made the project completely open-source and has received recognition for their very good boy from Hackaday, Raspberry Pi, and other publications. Just take a look at all the documentation they have and bring home your new robotic best friend!