Petoi Bittle Robot Dog for STEM and Fun

• Petoi Bittle Robot Dog for STEM and Fun
• A palm-sized robot dog that moves
• Driven by NyBoard V1
• Perfect for learning, teaching, researching, or a surprising gift
• Needs to be assembled
• Comes with a rechargeable Li-ion battery
• Ages: 12+

The Petoi Bittle Robot Dog for STEM and Fun is a tiny but powerful robot that can play tricks like real animals. Every bit has been fine-tuned to fit agile maneuverability into a palm-sized robot pet. This kit comes with a WiFi dongle and a Bluetooth dongle.

You can bring Bittle to life by assembling its puzzle-like frame and downloading the demo codes on GitHub. You can also teach it new skills to win prizes in community challenges.

Various uses

Bittle makes a perfect tool for learning, teaching, researching, or a surprising gift to impress your family and friends. Bittle is not a toy for small kids. Parental guidance is recommended to appreciate its rich content and avoid damage or injury. The Li-ion battery pack is good for about one hour of continuous walking.

Extensible Arduino module and Raspberry Pi Support

Evolving with an open-source gene, Bittle is an open platform to fuse multiple makers' gadgets into one organic system. With the customized Arduino board coordinating all instinctive and sophisticated movements, you can clip on various sensors to bring in perception.

Movement

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 previously, such as Boston Dynamics Spot or Sony Aibo. Petoi came up with a grassroots solution to simplify the system to make it affordable and mass-producible.

Body Frame

Bittle is a compact system of five major components: body frame, actuator, electronics, battery, and the software to coordinate all the hardware to perform varied tasks.

Each piece has gone through tens of iterations with 3D printing. Petoi then uses high-strength injection-molded plastic to provide the best protection from collision and dust (it's NOT waterproof!). In the stress tests, the assembled robot can take an adult's stepping without breaking any components (do NOT try this at home!).

NyBoard V1

Bittle is driven by NyBoard V1, a customized Arduino board with rich peripherals. Petoi fully utilized the chip of a regular Arduino Uno to coordinate sophisticated motions.

The board can drive at least 12 PWM servos, and an IMU (Inertial Measurement Unit) is used for balancing. It stores "muscle memory" and detects body status (orientation and acceleration) for balancing. Petoi provides an infrared remote to trigger basic movements. The board also listens to string commands from the serial port, such as "walk", "sit", or more detailed instructions for individual joints.

Battery

Petoi has designed a Li-ion battery pack with a built-in charging and protection circuit. It can slide into the track underneath Bittle and tune its center of mass. It can power Bittle for at least one hour of continuous walking. It also has an RGB LED to indicate the battery's status.

With the slide-in installation mechanism and an anti-reverse plug, it's not too hard to switch batteries. You may order extra batteries for uninterrupted research or playing. With some reconfiguration, it can also power our previous Nybble models.

Actuator

Petoi worked with a high-end servo manufacturer and iterated many times to find the optimized parameters. Now there is the model P1S, a slim, fast servo with a controllable angle of 270 degrees.

Nine P1S servos are used to actuate Bittle. Eight of them are for walking joints, and one is for head panning. One spare servo for replacement is also included, as brushed motors are consumable after a certain period of wearing.