Xiaomi is a company you generally associate with mobile phones, and indeed they just announced one, but along with the new phone was a new, surprisingly affordable and attractive CyberDog.

If you are  a robot enthusiast then presumably you lust after your own bipedal humanoid robot but... quadrupeds are much easier in many ways. They might not have arms but, they have four legs and this makes them both stable and more capable of negotiating difficult terrain. We have all seen Boston Dynamic's Spot go through it paces and it has done more for the quadruped format than just about any similar robot  and you can own one, but it isn't cheap at around $70K - hence many open source attempts to replicate it.

Now Xiaomi has announed CyberDog which is priced around $1,600 although worldwide distribution isn't available just yet. It seems to be a largely off-the-shelf design:

"Powering CyberDog’s brain is the NVIDIA® Jetson Xavier™ NX platform, an AI Supercomputer for Embedded and Edge Systems which includes 384 CUDA® Cores, 48 Tensor Cores, a 6 Carmel ARM CPU, and 2 deep learning acceleration engines."

It comes with a 3D camera courtesy of Intel and a host of sensors:

" It comes embedded with an array of camera sensors including AI interactive cameras, binocular ultra wide angle fisheye cameras, and Intel ® RealSense™ D450 Depth module, and can be trained with its computer vision algorithm. 

Built upon this vision sensor system are autonomous object tracking, SLAM, and centimeter-scale obstacle avoidance and navigation. This means that CyberDog can analyze its surroundings in real-time, create navigational maps, plot its destination, and avoid obstacles. Coupled with human posture and face recognition tracking, CyberDog is capable of following its owner and darting around obstructions.

To add to its pet-like nature, users can use voice assistants to command and control CyberDog by setting a wake word, or simply use its accompanying remote and smartphone app. CyberDog can be called on for the most unique tasks, and the ways in which it can be interacted with holds unforetold possibilities."

That seems like a lot for the money. See it in action:

I think it looks more like a cyberpuppy than a cyberdog - until you see it glow red that is. There is an open source project to help with development of applications. Question is - is there a killer application waiting for a cyberdog or are we just looking at something that is fun.

More Information

Xiaomi Launches Cyberdog – An Open Source Quadruped Robot Companion

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