There are a number of inventions happening daily in Robotics and Artificial Intelligence. It was just some years before when Sophia was presented before the public and researchers have shown the miracles Artificial Intelligence can create in Robotics as well. This time it is not Sophia, but a Dog like a Robot which has gained much attention from around the world. The Students of the Robotics club's Extreme Mobility team at Stanford University have developed a four-legged robot. The specialty of this Dog like Robot which makes it a masterpiece and very distinguishing from the others is that it is capable of performing acrobatic tricks and traversing challenging terrain.
The codes are made freely available online by the students. So it is a great opportunity for all those who want their own version of the robot, to easily consult these codes and comprehensive plans and purchase the components online.
"We had seen these other quadruped robots used in research, but they weren't something that you could bring into your own lab and use for your own projects," said Nathan Kau, '20, a mechanical engineering major and lead for Extreme Mobility. "We wanted Stanford Doggo to be this open source robot that you could build yourself on a relatively small budget."
The students at the Extreme mobility estimate the cost of the Stanford Doggo at less than $3000 which includes both manufacturing and shipping costs. The good thing is that all the components can be bought online.
The students are now working on a larger version of their creation which is currently about the size of a beagle.
To make the Stanford Doggo replicable the students spent a lot of time researching and finally implementing their idea. "It's been about two years since we first had the idea to make a quadruped. We've definitely made several prototypes before we actually started working on this iteration of the dog," said Natalie Ferrante, '19, a mechanical engineering coterminal student and Extreme Mobility Team member. "It was very exciting the first time we got him to walk."
The Stanford Doggo can be made to jump to 3½ feet off the ground when pushed off through its limits. This really surprised the students developing it.
"This was when we realized that the robot was, in some respects, higher performing than other quadruped robots used in research, even though it was really low cost," recalled Kau.
There are many ways the Stanford Doggo can be made to use by the people and that really depends on its user. "We're hoping to provide a baseline system that anyone could build," said Patrick Slade, a graduate student in aeronautics and astronautics and mentor for Extreme Mobility. "Say, for example, you wanted to work on search and rescue; you could outfit it with sensors and write code on top of ours that would let it climb rock piles or excavate through caves. Or maybe it's picking up stuff with an arm or carrying a package."