OpenCat - Open Source Quadruped Robotic Framework

We received some incredible entries showcasing the creativity and talent of our Petoi community. Thank you to everyone who participated!
We're thrilled to announce the winners.


Congratulations, Martin Kuba! We loved seeing your Bittle enjoying a joyful day around the house and the park playing with other robots.  Your video beautifully captured the theme with a wonderful storyline and a twist ending.

Martin shared his experiences with Bittle: 

My sister got me Bittle for Christmas (Best gift I've ever got, I've always wanted one so bad, and I'm really happy that I finally have my own Bittle!)
I'm a young modern tech enthusiast with quite a lot of electrical knowledge, but I'm planning on learning more about programming and robotics too. And I'm sure Bittle will be a great teammate, that will help me to learn (not only) the basics, discover more of the possibilities of coding, and during that also gain new experience and have some fun!

Unfortunately, we didn't receive any entries that met the criteria for winning. While we appreciate everyone who submitted, we've decided not to award a winner for this theme.

Better luck next time!

Congratulations to Reid Graves, a graduate student from Carnegie Mellon University! Your entry featuring a Petoi Bittle robot dog collecting acorns autonomously was ingenious and perfectly demonstrated its hardware extensibility and unique talents powered by Al.

Reid shared his insights using bittle for AI robotics research:

I started working with Bittle last September for a research project. The ultimate goal of the project is autonomous swarm behavior with a collection of Bittle robots. For example, having 3 robots exploring their environment looking for food, such as acorns, and working together to collect all the acorns. Starting off, I had minimal experience using Ardiuno, and zero experience using raspberry pi or ROS. Since the project began, I have learned many skills, such as python socket communication, linux command line, GIT, opencv, YOLO, raspberry pi, and ROS2, just to name a few.

He shared two versions of the project: 

• Using raspberry pi with python sockets
• Using raspberry pi with ROS2 Humble

New Themes Added

While a few remarkable video may not have claimed top prizes in the original theme contests, we're delighted to add new themes to spotlight them because they caught our attention and amazed us.

10-year-old girl Ekaterina created this storyline to code her Bittle to dance with brand new moves:

I have a robot pet. It likes dancing a lot. Once he heard my favorite song and saw how I danced while listening to it. It decided to dance as well. I saw its dancing and filmed it.

Her dad Vitaly shared why they bought Bittle and how they are going to use Bittle robot dog:

We cannot have a real dog or cat because of an allergy. Bittle and Nybble are our pets and the most impressive robots we have. It is really cool that Bittle can recognize voice commands and do such cool tricks as a backflip. We would like to learn better how to program Bittle and use our prize to teach Bittle following an object. And we are going to participate in the next contest :-)

I would also add that I am a big fan of open source. Thus the fact that Petoi project uses open hardware and software really matters to me. It is probably the most interesting open source robotic platform. Personally I would like to create some set of tasks for my children to show them how to program the robot and implement their ideas.

10-year-old boy Miel used Petoi Coding Blocks to program his Petoi Bittle robot to sing and dance to celebrate his mom's birthday.

Miel's dad Pieter shared the project idea and their feedback on Bittle:

He wanted to create something original for his mom's birthday so he combined Play Melody and Perform skill instructions to get to this result.
It took quite some iteration to get all timings and tones right but with some perseverance and patience he managed to get this beautiful result!
making his mom so proud!
I just bought Bittle as a tool for my boys to introduce them to the fun world of robotics, technology and programming.  
Bittle just is the cutest, it’s so versatile, my youngest just uses it to walk around the room and do some tricks using the remote while my oldest uses it to practice his programming skills in Mind+. It’s just so much fun and educational.

In the future we hope we can learn more by exploring the accessories, sensors and voice recognition. Can’t wait to extend his behavior with these extras, and I am sure that it will inspire my kids to play and learn even more.

A big shout-out to both young roboticists: they are our future robot masters! Keep up the great work.

Our hearts melted when we watched Catherine Walker's touching story about a Petoi robot dog Bittle X befriending a human on Earth. We commend Catherine Walker from University of Redlands for using robotics to empower foster youth!

Catherine has a great plan to use Bittle robots:

I am so excited to include Petoi robots in our summer foster youth curriculum. Kids need access to high tech learning opportunities, especially foster youth. Foster youth live a life of many transitions; they are moved from house to house and school to school, rarely getting to stay any place very long where a real investment can be made in them. This is what my program strives to do. We like to take every opportunity possible where we can show these kids at different future, one where they belong. This summer, we will be featuring the Petoi robots in our computer programming class. We will also be integrating them across other classes. In our Makerspace, we will be 3D printing the dog collars. In our video class, students will be creating their own storylines, filming their robots, and editing a final production.

Next Steps:

We've reached out to the winners via email to arrange prize delivery.

Thank you again to everyone who participated in our contest. Your enthusiasm and creativity were truly inspiring!  We appreciate all of your feedback and suggestions on making our contest and products more fun and engaging. Practice your robot pet coding skills and share your robotics creation on social media and Petoi robot forum. 

Stay tuned for our next contest announcement!

If you have any suggestions or are interested in running a robotics contest for your robotics camp or institution, please feel free to contact us.

There’s some exciting robotics research coming out of universities across the globe, and we at Petoi are privileged to be a part of this story!

In the summer of 2023, two undergraduate physics students, Deep Patel and Aidan Bannon from Haverford College, were using the Petoi Bittle (our flagship 3d printed robot dog)  as part of an ongoing and interesting study.

Their goal: to test how substrate properties and foot design influence power consumption, slippage and walking speed in robots.

Working with Prof. Suzanne Amador Kane (Haverford College) and Prof. S. Tonia Hsieh (Temple University), they started by creating a circular track for the Petoi Bittle as a frictional interaction testbed.

As you can see in the picture above, the group has attached a universal joint to constrain the robot to the circular track, a power tester to display power draw, and markers for computer vision tracking.

Below, you may also find the research poster the students presented at the Haverford Summer Research Symposium.

Currently, the research is still in the preliminary phases of experimentation with this apparatus, but there are hopes to begin trials soon in 2024.

We at Petoi will keep you posted with the latest from these bright minds out of Haverford! To never miss an update on this story, news, and tutorials, scroll down below, and don't forget to subscribe to our newsletter!

Interested in reading more featuring the best in college and university robotics research?

Watch how the robotics camp middle school students at the Chinese University of Hong Kong how to build & program Petoi Nybble robot cat!

Keep up with the latest and most useful updates out of Petoi Camp, right here on our blog.

Thanks for reading. Let us know what you think- make sure to leave a comment below, and feel free to get in touch with us!

Witness the future of robotics on ice! Watch our adorable Petoi Bittle robot dogs steal the show at the Robots on Ice 2024 event in San Francisco, California, US.

The fourth Robots on Ice event, hosted by The Silicon Valley Ice Skating Association (SVISA) , brought together robotics enthusiasts, robotics club students, ice skating performances, and a mesmerizing tech-fashion show! At the event, we showcased our beloved Petoi Bittle & Bittle X robot dogs, and they stole the show! 

Users of all ages got to control and play with these adorable Petoi robotics companions themselves on ice with Petoi Mobile App alongside other robots like Boston Dynamics Spot Mini, cars, balls and trackers. 

Unlike other bigger robots such as Boston Dynamics Spot Mini, which are typically controlled by dedicated operators and not available to the audience for hands-on experiences, our small but mighty robot dog Bittle & Bittle X offers a unique interactive experience.  It's an immersive and engaging experience that sets us apart in the robotics world.

The event also facilitated discussions on engaging kids with robotics coding & STEM from an early age, through school robotics projects, robotics summer camps and more. Robotics enthusiasts exchanged ideas on fostering interest in this cutting-edge field among the next generation. Petoi's display highlighted the entertainment potential of accessible, user-friendly robotics that inspire wonder and creativity.

We hope to see you and your Petoi robots on ice at the event next year!

At the world's premier energy conference CERAWeek, Kevon Mayers, Solutions Architect at Amazon Web Services (AWS), showcased a demo he's been working on over the last month or so around IoT connected robot dog Bittle and how they can be used to improve worker safety:

"They are all able to be controlled via an AWS Amplify web application that I built, and can respond to events from an air quality wearable sensor that my coworker Constantine V. developed. They also have the ability to be controlled via Amazon Alexa voice commands, developed by another of my coworkers, Prathyusha Nandam ! The solution is fully deployable with a custom HashiCorp Terraform module I wrote. " 

Kevon Mayers and his colleague Constantine Vavourakis have open sourced their work as IoT Puppy Park: Connected Worker Safety with Terraform, a guided example of how you can leverage AWS IoT Core, AWS Amplify, Terraform, and robotics to improve worker safety:

"In this workshop, you build a solution to help improve worker safety by leveraging AWS IoT, and robotics. The solution will include an AWS Amplify App that allows you to issue commands to each robot, as well as an entire fleet of robots. The solution will also include connectivity with an air quality sensor to track simulated toxins. To streamline deployment and management, all of this will be able to be deployed by leveraging Terraform."

Even though Petoi Bittle is a small robot dog that may not be conceived as an industrial robot for IoT automation, this AWS IoT demo has received a lot of positive feedback from industry players looking for affordable quadruped robots that can go into small spaces where big robot dogs such as Boston Dynamic Spot Mini robot dogs can't go.  AI models can also be deployed on Bittle to navigate and sense without human intervention.

With the affordable price and camera and sensor support via Ardunio and RaspBerry Pi, Petoi Bittle open source robot dogs are great robotics kits for IoT automation prototyping and deployment with many different industrial robotics use cases.

A summary from Jen O'Hehir, the Senior Solutions Architect at Amazon Web Services (AWS):

Latency Conference is a cloud-agnostic community event designed for progressive IT leaders, developers, testers, and product owners. The conference is dedicated to exploring the cultural values, tools, and teams required for building and operating products in the cloud. This year we saw over 500 attendees come together for 2 days for an in-person event to celebrate the incredible things being done in our local tech community.

Each year AWS sponsors this event and runs a booth where tech folk can come and talk with us about their goals and get some guidance. This year we also ran a demonstration stand with an IoT Stack including a Petoi Robot Dog Bittle and an M5 Stick with an Air Quality Sensor.

This demonstration was based on the IoT Puppy Park Workshop using Petoi Bittle robot dog and had extensions using IoT Event Rules into Amazon IoT Sitewise and Amazon Managed Grafana, alerting and a dashboard of the air quality metrics and battery levels.

The demonstration proved the secure, low latency flow of information up to the cloud as well as commands from a hosted application back to the Robot dogs using AWS IoT services. Conference attendees enjoyed having a go commanding the dogs to do actions as well as triggering the low air quality alert with the dogs warning them of danger.

We just released BiBoard,  an ESP32-based quadruped robot dog controller that's equipped with high-performance processors, larger memory and storage, and wireless connections.  Audio function is also included.

Check the following demo videos of running BiBoard on Bittle to see its great performance:

Arduino developers, robotics coders, programmers, developers, and engineers would love this great board with a reasonable price to build their own multi-legged robots.

We were so delighted to have Petoi quadruped robot dog Bittle and robot cat Nybble meet with makers of all ages and robotics buddies at the fabulous Open Sauce event in San Francisco.

Everyone had a lot of fun playing with Petoi open-source robotics kits. We also showcased Petoi's high-performance servos, ESP32-based BiBoad, Arduino Uno compatible NyBoard, various sensors, voice command module, and smart camera module.

The Silicon Valley Ice Skating Association (SVISA) hosted its third Robots on Ice event in Palo Alto, California, on February 26, 2023.   The third annual edition of the event aimed to bridge the worlds of ice skating and Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM). It is done by showcasing robots on an ice rink. 

The choice of an ice skating rink as the venue for the robot demonstrations proved inspiring. The spacious rink provided ample room for the robots, including robot cars, robotic balls, and quadruped robots. So, they all showed their capabilities while keeping them close to the audience. Moreover, the ice surface presented a compelling challenge for the robots. 

Bittle wowed the crowd with its exceptional performance among the impressive lineup of robots. This quadruped robotic dog excelled in every aspect, navigating the icy terrain without problems. Bittle's agility and resilience were on full display. It skillfully bounded across the ice, captivating the attention and appreciation of the spectators. The fact that Bittle returned unscathed without damaging its body showcased its durability and robust design.

The event creates an immersive experience for attendees. So, they have captivated their imaginations and inspired them to explore the limitless possibilities of science and technology.

The enthusiastic response from both participants and onlookers solidifies the event's importance. Encouraging kids and teens to embrace robotics and STEM skills with robotics kits lays the foundation for future innovators and scientists. Hence, they can ensure a brighter future where technology and creativity intertwine by nurturing this interest and enthusiasm.

In conclusion, the outstanding performance of Robot Dog Bittle on the ice rink at the STEM-focused extravaganza captivated the audience's imagination. The success of this event demonstrates the potential of showcasing robotics in unconventional settings, creating a bridge between technology and traditional activities like ice skating. By instilling excitement and interest in robots and STEM skills among young minds, we empower future generations to become the pioneers who shape the world of tomorrow.

Bittle open source robot dog is having some fun using a camera and a few IoT sensors to do an Easter Egg hunt and celebrate the National Robotics Week from April 8 to 16:

The sensors in the video:

• Object recognition smart camera module: Enhance Bittle Robot Dog, your quadruped robotics device with a cutting-edge smart camera module designed for object recognition. Experience advanced visual capabilities without compromising on performance.
• Touch sensor: Expand your device's sensing system with our touch sensor featuring two touch pads for sensing touches.
• Gesture sensor for intuitive control: Enable Bittle robot dog, your device, to recognize basic gestures such as top, down, left, and right movements. Unlock the potential for performing tricks and effortlessly navigate through functions. The gesture sensor is seamlessly integrated via the Grove connector's 12C pins (SCL/SDA). 
• Light sensor for brightness detection: Enhance robot dog Bittle's adaptability with a light sensor module that measures brightness. Enable your device to effortlessly track and follow a light source for improved functionality. The light sensor module utilizes two analog input pins in the Grove connector.

All of the sensors and the camera are Arduino-compatible modules and can work with Raspberry Pi. 

In the summer of 2022, Syracuse University had the pleasure of hosting the STEM Trekkers Robotic Workshop, a thrilling event aimed at inspiring young minds in the field of robotics. One of the highlights of the workshop was the deployment of Petoi's remarkable robot dog, Bittle. This advanced robotic companion captured the attention and imagination of the participants, offering a unique and interactive learning experience.

The STEM Trekkers Robotic Workshop was an initiative designed to introduce middle school students to the exciting world of robotics and foster their interest in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) fields. The workshop featured a range of hands-on activities and educational sessions that allowed participants to explore the principles of robotics, coding, and engineering.

At the heart of the workshop was Petoi's bionic robot dogBittle, a high-performance, open-source quadruped robot designed to mimic the movements and behavior of a real dog. Its compact size, sleek design, and advanced capabilities make it a perfect tool for teaching robotics and inspiring creativity.

During the workshop, participants had the opportunity to interact with Bittle and learn about its features and functionalities. They discovered how to control Bittle's movements, program it to perform various tasks, and even customize its behavior using Petoi's  Open Source Programmable Bittle Robot Dog. This hands-on experience allowed the students to explore the possibilities of robotics in a fun and engaging way.

The deployment of Bittle at the STEM Trekkers Robotic Workshop also provided an opportunity to discuss the importance of open-source platforms in robotics education. Petoi's commitment to open-source software enables students and educators to access and modify the technology, fostering innovation and collaboration within the robotics community.

Throughout the workshop, participants worked in teams, collaborating on projects and solving challenges using Bittle. This collaborative approach not only enhanced their problem-solving and critical-thinking skills but also nurtured their ability to work effectively as a team. The students quickly discovered that robotics is a multidisciplinary field that requires expertise in programming, engineering, and design.

The workshop also incorporated elements of coding, allowing participants to explore the relationship between robotics and computer science. They learned how to program Bittle using a block-based coding environment, enabling them to develop custom behaviors and functionalities for the robot dog.

The presence of Bittle in the form of a quadruped robot pet at the STEM Trekkers Robotic Workshop sparked enthusiasm and curiosity among the participants. The interactive sessions and hands-on activities with Bittle instilled a sense of wonder and excitement, inspiring young minds to pursue further studies and careers in robotics and STEM fields.

The success of the workshop demonstrated the potential of Petoi's bionic robot dog, Bittle, as an educational robot tool. Its versatility, advanced four-legged movement capabilities, and interactive nature differentiate it from other forms of robotics, making it an ideal companion for educators and students alike. By incorporating Bittle into robotics workshops and educational programs, institutions can provide students with an immersive and engaging learning experience to engage with advanced robotics technology, explore coding and programming, and develop essential skills for the future.  By combining theory with hands-on practice, the workshop fostered a deep understanding of robotics and ignited a passion for STEM fields.

In conclusion, the deployment of Petoi's robot dog, Bittle, at the Syracuse University STEM Trekkers Robotic Workshop was a resounding success. The workshop provided students with a unique opportunity to engage with advanced robotics technology, explore coding and programming, and develop essential skills for the future.

In case you need help picking a robotics kit for your classroom, please check out our guides:

1. Top 5 educational coding robots for kids  

2. Best robotics kits for computer science & engineering students in college & university.