State-of-the-art Quadruped Robot

14 Jul, 2023
Posted by: Hiwonder -

State-of-the-art quadruped combines Raspberry Pi and ROS for powerful learning options. By Lucy

There's no denying that PuppyPi is an eye-catching robot.

Inside its black aluminium alloy frame this quadruped features eight high-quality HPS-0618SG coreless servo motors with metal joints, and a six-axis IMU sensor chip MPU6050 for robot posture detection. PuppyPi is assembled by Hiwonder, who created the larger SpiderPi robot and TonyPi, all strong contenders in the robotics space. At the front of PuppyPi sits a 480p camera and inside is a Raspberry Pi 4 running ROS (robot operating system), a motor control board, and 7.4V 2200mAh LiPo battery. It's a lot smaller than SpiderPi; it's cuter too, even with the black metal styling and single-eye camera. Inside the box are some coloured balls, tags, and an 8.4V charger. We also got the PS2-style controller for testing, and an Advanced kit comes with extra sensors and attachments. A pro model comes with Lidar. Our test model worked fresh out of the box. Power it up using the switch on the side, and it instantly stands up and transmits a Wi-Fi network to join.

here's no denying that PuppyPi is an eye-catching robot. Inside its black aluminium alloy frame this quadruped features eight high-quality HPS-0618SG coreless servo motors with metal joints, and a six-axis IMU sensor chip MPU6w050 for robot posture detection. PuppyPi is assembled by Hiwonder, who created the larger SpiderPi robot and TonyPi, all strong contenders in the robotics space. At the front of PuppyPi sits a 480p camera and inside is a Raspberry Pi 4 running ROS (robot operating system), a motor control board, and 7.4V 2200mAh LiPo battery.

It's a lot smaller than SpiderPi; it's cuter too, even with the black metal styling and single-eye camera. Inside the box are some coloured balls, tags, and an 8.4V charger. We also got the PS2-style controller for testing, and an Advanced kit comes with extra sensors and attachments. A pro model comes with Lidar. Our test model worked fresh out of the box. Power it up using the switch on the side, and it instantly stands up and transmits a Wi-Fi network to join. The Hiwonder iOS/Android app enables direct control of PuppyPi from a smartphone. You remotely control the

robot as the camera view displays on your screen. A range of pre-defined actions are available: sit, bow, shake hands, and so on. There are also colour recognition, target colour tracking, QR code tag recognition, OpenCV face detection, and line following modes. You control the robot via the Android or iOS app, a desktop app, or using the optional PS2-style controller. Next, we flipped the protective lid off PuppyPi to take a closer look inside. There is a Raspberry Pi 4 with 4GB RAM and a motor control and expansion board. This features a barrel jack for charging, four servo ports, two GPIO ports, and four IIC ports, RGB lights, and two programmable buttons. Extensions offered by Hiwonder include a Lidar module, ultrasonic sensor, MP3 module, display, and touch

The Hiwonder iOS/Android app enables direct control of PuppyPi from a smartphone. You remotely control the robot as the camera view displays on your screen. A range of pre-defined actions are available: sit, bow, shake hands, and so on. There are also colour recognition, target colour tracking, QR code tag recognition, OpenCV face detection, and line following modes. You control the robot via the Android or iOS app, a desktop app, or using the optional PS2-style controller. Next, we flipped the protective lid off PuppyPi to take a closer look inside. There is a Raspberry Pi 4 with 4GB RAM and a motor control and expansion board. This features a barrel jack for charging, four servo ports, two GPIO ports, and four IIC ports, RGB lights, and two programmable buttons. Extensions offered by Hiwonder include a Lidar module, ultrasonic sensor, MP3 module, display, and touch sensor. The software running on PuppyPi is Raspberry Pi OS with custom applications and ROS (robot operating system) support. Connecting to Raspberry Pi via VNC reveals a PuppyPi desktop application that is used to visually program and chain together commands. You can dig deeper with a Python API, and it supports Gazebo simulation, enabling you to simulate movement in advance.

An excellent addition to any robotics course or classroom

and dive into the world of Python programming and ROS experimentation. To this end, a huge range of tutorial PDFs are provided by Hiwonder via Google Drive. These cover everything from Python, Gazebo, ROS and OpenCV vision tracking; up to stair climbing and obstacle avoidance. We didn't encounter any real problems during testing. Both Raspberry Pi OS and the PuppyPi PC_Software app defaulted to Chinese (easy enough to fx in Preferences).PuppyPi is obviously not cheap in the

Deep training

Once you've connected PuppyPi to your network, it's possible to move beyond the iOS/Android app and dive into the world of Python programming and ROS experimentation. To this end, a huge range of tutorial PDFs are provided by Hiwonder via Google Drive. These cover everything from Python, Gazebo, ROS and OpenCV vision tracking; up to stair climbing and obstacle avoidance. We didn't encounter any real problems during testing. Both Raspberry Pi OS and the PuppyPi PC_Software app defaulted to Chinese (easy enough to fx in Preferences).PuppyPi is obviously not cheap in the world of Raspberry Pi robotics, but Boston Dynamic's Spot robot comes in at roughly £200,000, so it's relative. We think this would be an excellent addition to any robotics course or classroom.

sensor. The software running on PuppyPi is Raspberry Pi OS with custom applications and ROS (robot operating system) support. Connecting to Raspberry Pi via VNC reveals a PuppyPi desktop application that

world of Raspberry Pi robotics, but Boston Dynamic's Spot robot comes in at roughly £200,000, so it's relative. We think this would be an excellent addition to any robotics course or classroom.

is used to visually program and chain together commands. You can dig deeper with a Python API, and it supports Gazebo simulation, enabling you to simulate movement in advance.

Deep training

Once you've connected PuppyPi to your network, it's possible to move beyond the iOS/Android app