Black Mirror fans probably know about the robotic dog featured in the fifth episode, titled “Metalhead,” as they were inspired by Boston Dynamics’ robots such as BigDog. Well, a group of college students decided to build a miniaturized version for less than $900, and it’s called “Stanford Pupper”. All it took was a 3D printer, Sony PlayStation controller and other easy to obtain parts.
Though it may be small, this miniaturized robot boasts twelve degrees of freedom, which can send it backwards, forwards, side-to-side as well as a bonus ‘sneaky mode’ that copies how a real canine creeps on the floor. If you already have a Raspberry Pi computer or PS4 controller, the cost to build one could drop all the way down to a mere $600.
We’re a student robotics team at Stanford and we were inspired by other quadrupeds and other legged robots that we’re seeing out there like Boston Dynamics. But we really want to play and have one in our own hands, and we didn’t have a way to do that because they are very expensive,” said Nathan Kau, one of the builders.
