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OpenCat: Open-source robotic pet quadruped framework
- mysterydip 3y agoPresented with a signup popup modal before I could even scroll down to read the first paragraph. I get you want engagement, but that's too aggressive for me. Page closed.
- gobsmacker 3y agoDo you feel like this focus on minutia versus substance has led you to miss otherwise insightful content?
- exe34 3y agoI instinctively closed the popup, so I have no idea what I just agreed to...
- barfbagginus 3y agoDo you feel that a focus on dismissing and defending dark patterns is appropriate or constructive? What world are you helping construct, and what values are you supporting? Are you aiming for a world where open hardware becomes dominant and beneficial? I feel the point was a valid red flag. This org may be more interested in marketing itself than it is in supporting open source. Looking at their repos, we find that the designs for their robots are not public. This company is using the open core / artificial scarcity model for their hardware, while presenting themselves as a fully open source organization. This is an organization exploiting open source for its marketing, without supporting open hardware. This is important: Contributors looking for a real open hardware project to work on should consider looking elsewhere. If they contribute to this project, they would be contributing to a partially proprietary ecosystem. This tends to compromise the promise of Open hardware, which includes low cost replication and iteration on hardware designs. Tldr: when an open source organization practices dark patterns, people need to hear about it. It's not a minute fact- it's a major compromise of Open source values and outcomes.
- Baeocystin 3y agoNot OP, but I do the same, and no, not in the least. The amount of information available, even filtering for the best of the best by whatever heuristic I can choose, is vastly larger than my ability to process as a single person. If anything, I've found that the faster I reject due to dark patterns, the better off and more informed I am. If something is truly worth learning about, it will bubble up again elsewhere soon enough.
- serf 3y agoI feel, personally, that 'signs of quality' are one of the best metrics an individual can have for making a decision to spend time on something. Making a judgement on what to spend time on is literally the thing that allows for it to happen. Otherwise my time would be spent on shit.
- bialpio 3y agoNo. There's so much content fighting for my (limited) attention that there is no loss to ignore user-hostile sites.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- skadamat 3y agoGitHub page is better & cleaner for those curious: https://github.com/PetoiCamp/OpenCat https://github.com/PetoiCamp/OpenCat
- Animats 3y agoYes. The Petoi site boasts about how many stars they have on Github, but don't actually link to it.
- jimsmart 3y agoI have Bittle, their Open Source robot dog. Got it when they were doing the kickstarter. It’s pretty cool :)
- A4ET8a8uTh0 3y agoSuper neat. I am slowly trying to get my kid into the space so I will be watching this one. Incidentally, if anyone can share similiar efforts or kid ready sets, I would love to hear about it.
- tamimio 3y agoDepends on their age and what level, there are “toys” you can buy with some visual programming like DJI robomaster, or advanced ones that actually use real lidar and stereo cam with ROS like AgileX limo (original price is $1000 btw, if a reseller is selling it for more they are just gauging the price), and also there are DIY ones that require 3D printing and such.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 3y agoOk. That is cool. You were not kidding about gauging though. Geez. I might need to shop around and hope I can grab one at a reasonable price. Amusingly, kid got super excited about the arm. I am starting to think we may be able to get into this together.
- gareth_untether 3y agoCharles Stross’s Accelerando comes to mind.
- nestorD 3y agoVery much so! Someone clearly did not (or did?) read the book...
- nimbius 3y agoThe price to adopt a real cat is ~100usd in most states. Why not just get a cat? This projects like 300usd.
- ksenzee 3y agoTotal cost of ownership of a cat is considerably more than $300, unless you plan to make your cat hunt its own food, fail to license it, and never take it to the vet.
- wccrawford 3y agoAnd it never destroys anything.
- nimbius 3y agoSo we already known the TCO of the product and the TCO of a cat, and we know the product will never cause damage due to a battery fire for example. sigh if you want to build a robot, build one. Quit calling them cats and dogs. The marketing is cheezy.
- aj7 3y agoBut live cat ships with much better software. It’s not close.
- kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 3y agoBut it's impossible to control...
- HarHarVeryFunny 3y agoA robot cat would be impossible to control too if you programmed it correctly!
- ksenzee 3y agoI’m a pretty big fan of my live cat and the software she shipped with, I’m not interested in building a robot cat, and I think TCO is the wrong criterion to base this decision on in the first place—but a cat costs real money to take care of correctly, and people need to consider TCO if they adopt an animal.
- tamimio 3y agoDespite their cool look and visually appealing design, QUGVs are still not optimal for practical real-world applications. Their limited mobility in comparison to UAVs for ISR operations, coupled with a mediocre payload capacity relative to traditional UGVs, results in a platform that have disadvantages from both categories. In my opinion, QUGVs are primarily beneficial for educational purposes or just a show or a ‘wow’ reaction from those outside the robotics field. For example, Boston Dynamics cannot descend stairs in reverse last time I checked, while Unitree tend to overheat rapidly, with internal components that are susceptible to failure, and they are constructed with cheap components, such as three Jetson Nanos, rather than a single, more robust SBC, etc.
- tweetle_beetle 3y agoYou're not wrong, but probably applying a critique which is irrelevant to the product under discussion. I don't think potential owners of 'robotic pets' will be making purchases based on maximising payload capacity, or practical real-world applications.
- tamimio 3y agoYou are not wrong either, hence why I said > QUGVs are primarily beneficial for educational purposes… But it still beneficial to give a heads up for anyone before investing efforts and time that QUGVs are simply for these purposes, which is something you can see in some comments in here, personally, I would invest those efforts in drones but YMMV.
- idiotsecant 3y agoWhat efforts are you saying are poorly invested? Objective: robot cat. Output: robot cat. Seems like everyone is getting what they want and you're just inserting a random pedantic critique.
- admax88qqq 3y agoPeak HN "I want to build a robot cat" "What you really want to build is a drone because quadrupeds cannot go downstairs backwards"
- martey 3y agoBoth the website and the project's Github repository loudly trumpet that they are "open source" next to photos of proprietary hardware. In https://github.com/PetoiCamp/OpenCat-Old/issues/7 https://github.com/PetoiCamp/OpenCat-Old/issues/7, the creator admits that the "nyboard" (https://docs.petoi.com/nyboard/overview https://docs.petoi.com/nyboard/overview) at the heart of their robots is derived from Arduino, but insists that they don't need to comply with the licensing terms for derivative boards (https://support.arduino.cc/hc/en-us/articles/4415094490770-Licensing-for-products-based-on-Arduino#hardware-products https://support.arduino.cc/hc/en-us/articles/4415094490770-L...) because Arduino is unlikely to sue them.
- jonathankoren 3y agoNot “open” like “open source”. “Open” like “OpenAI” “As we get closer to building AI, it will make sense to start being less open. The Open in openAI means that everyone should benefit from the fruits of AI after it’s built, but it's totally OK to not share the science. — Ilya Sutskever https://openai.com/blog/openai-elon-musk https://openai.com/blog/openai-elon-musk
- brookst 3y agoAh so we have free as in speech, free as in beer, and free as in shoplifted.
- twelvechairs 3y agoIt's standard business tactics to stretch the use of words until they are no longer recognisable.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- jonathankoren 3y agoAnd that’s why is beyond should call them out about their blatant lying instead of shrug it off
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- clhodapp 3y agoPetoi had a rep at OpenSauce in San Francisco. I picked up a Nybble, because I like the look of Nybble better than Bittle. It's a fun little toy and I really appreciate what Petoi are doing with the robots & the OpenCat framework! However... due to either a design flaw or my own subtle mistake in assembling it (haven't identified which yet), the poor cat's tail is too long! It hits the floor and topples the bot over!
- nine_k 3y agoMod yours into a bobcat or a lynx!
- spacecadet 3y agohttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manx_cat https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manx_cat
- isuckatcoding 3y agoReal pets looking nervously around… In seriousness this is really cool! I wish I had this in school for robotics learning.
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- swayvil 3y ago>Customizable parts. Open choice of components. He says, gesturing at the robot's groin.
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- underlogic 3y agoCute until someone straps a gun to it
- DaSHacka 3y agoSo, just like a normal pet?
- underlogic 3y agoMore disposable and with better aim. Seriously this is a huge problem. It took no time at all for Ukraine to weaponize commercial UAVs. An open source mobile gunning platform? Throw in LTE and some solar panels and this thing is an assassin's dream. Could be used anonymously. Could sit in wait for 5 years I'd wager
- Yenrabbit 3y agoIt's slow, palm-sized and worse than a normal RC car in pretty much every way. This is not the mobile gunning platform you're worried about
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- wslh 3y agoI am eager to see a wheeled car like that support an [old] mobile phone over and is cheaper than USD 30? Good for education. The "prototype" via Lego Mindstorms is more expensive. I think much of the cost is a good motor now? There were startups trying to make this but I think they are closed [1]. [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20190104173241/http://www.simplebotics.com/2016/02/the-rise-and-fall-of-robot-startup-romotive.html https://web.archive.org/web/20190104173241/http://www.simple...
- HALtheWise 3y agoFYI, Romotive became Zipline, and is now (one of the) most successful drone delivery companies. It's a wild pivot story.
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- mangocheetah123 3y ago[flagged]
- aussieguy1234 3y agoWith large language models, it should be possible to make robot "pets" that can talk. You won't fit a big graphics card into one of these things at the current SOTA, but you don't need to. It would just need to be internet connected and calling APIs.
- shagie 3y agohttps://www.theverge.com/2023/10/26/23933213/boston-dynamics-robot-dog-spot-top-hat https://www.theverge.com/2023/10/26/23933213/boston-dynamics...
- HarHarVeryFunny 3y agoYeah - and now the APIs can do vision too. About time to build Teddy from the movie "AI".
- deckar01 3y agoWhat I need is a solar powered turtle that can silently mow my lawn.
- JansjoFromIkea 3y agoWhat are the pros of this compared to the seemingly cheaper Sunfounder PiDog? The latter seems to be a bit better wrt sensors and the like.
- scotty79 3y agoIt's amazing what's available commercially right now. So quick after Boston Dynamics shown and sold theirs for the first time. https://unitreerobotics.net/robotdog/unitree-go1-pro/ https://unitreerobotics.net/robotdog/unitree-go1-pro/ You could get a decent computer and a robot dog for a price of Mac Pro.
- LargoLasskhyfv 3y agoÄ-Ä-Äye kän h-h-h-äz chee-chee-zz-zz-byrrgr-r-r-r-r?