They present a robot dog with Ubuntu as the operating system.

If you always wanted to have a dog, but allergies, lack of space or the time it takes to treat it as it deserves stopped you, you can choose another alternative.  It is an open source robot whose construction is reminiscent of man's best friend. The product has just been launched by the Chinese giant Xiaomi and carries the little original name of CyberDog.

Truth be told, it is not a toy (And, before the ghosts of all my past dogs begin to haunt me I declare that it is not even close to being a real alternative).  CyberDog is intended to foster the improvement of the robot development environment and will promote the growth of the robotics industry.

Huang Changjiang, from Xiaomi defined the project as:

CyberDog is the technology companion for the developers of the future. It is equipped with in-house manufactured high-performance servo motors, high computing capacity, with built-in artificial intelligence for the visual detection system and the voice interaction system, also supporting a variety of bionic movement gestures.

Why do you present an open source robot dog?

The CyberDog project is part of a larger project dedicated to building four-legged robot development platforms. By opting for the open source approach, Xiaomi aims to conbuild a community and take advantage of the contributions of the members for its maintenance and expansion. The goal is to count on the contribution and maintenance of the community. The desired result is to build a rich ecosystem of applications and compatibility with technologies used in the field of robotics.

Price

To ensure the adoption of their products, from Xiaomi they decided to market it at a base price of 1540 dollarss. This is quite less than its closest competitor called Spot. Developed by Boston Dynamics, Spot is available for a base price of $ 74000. Without a doubt, if you are a research institute with limited funds or a new technology company, you will prefer CyberDog.

Do not think that the price difference implies a loss of quality or performance. CyberDog's internal high-performance servo motors provide a maximum torque of 32Nm, 220rpm, and a speed of 3,2m / s, ensuring the robot's high-speed, high-torque and agile response. Powerful performance support allows CyberDog to perform various complex movements with ease, such as back flips and other difficult movements.

CyberDog is capable of interactive reactions that real dogs perform intuitively, as well as analysis and environmental perception. Through its 11 high-precision sensors that are always on standby, it can detect any minor changes in the environment. Thanks to its built-in super perception visual detection system, CyberDog is capable of autonomous recognition, SLAM mapping, and obstacle avoidance and navigation functions.

By using facial recognition technologies CyberDog is capable of pet-like behaviors, such as following the owner in an open space, creating a navigation map through algorithms, and automatically planning the optimal route to the next target point.

The role of Ubuntu.

CyberDog's operating system is Ubuntu 18.04. The choice of the Canonical Linux distribution is not only because it is an open source operating system. Also, it has full support for ROS 2.

The Robot Operating System (ROS) is a set of software libraries and tools for creating robot applications. From controllers to state-of-the-art algorithms and powerful development tools, ROS has what it takes to start robotics projects using open source technologies.

At the moment only 1000 units of CyberDog have been manufactured.

IF you are wondering what is the usefulness of this type of project, The four-legged robots are used for mine exploration, disaster relief support, industrial inspections, the construction industry, and other activities in hard-to-reach locations.