Robots can look like all sorts of things, but they’re often more fun if you make them look like some kind of charming animal. That’s precisely what [Ananya], [Laurence] and [Shao] did when they built Cucumber the Robot Dog for their final project in the ECE 4760 class.
Cucumber is controllable over WiFi, which was simple enough to implement by virtue of the fact that it’s based around the Raspberry Pi Pico W. With its custom 3D-printed dog-like body, it’s able to move around on its four wheels driven by DC gear motors, and it can flex its limbs thanks to servos in its various joints. It’s able to follow someone with some autonomy thanks to its ultrasonic sensors, while it can also be driven around manually if so desired. To give it more animal qualities, it can also be posed, or commanded to bark, howl, or growl, with commands issued remotely via a web interface.
The level of sophistication is largely on the level of the robot dogs that were so popular in the early 2000s. One suspects it could be pretty decent at playing soccer, too, with the right hands behind the controls. Video after the break.
Cool project. But the bone example is really selling it, nice touch.
You gotta love project and product names that produce half a million wrong results in a search. Nice choice though. I will have to use it for a friendly raccoon that reminds me of ‘Chowder’.
It’s a cute name though. Instantly creates empathetic affinity
Neat mix of wheels and legs.
I suggest the Turing test equivalent for robot dogs is if a friendly dog will respond to it doing a play bow 🤷♂️
I thought it was neat, but disappointed that the article did not say WHAT SCHOOL you could go to to have such a class in teh curriculum?
But, my guess is this is Cornell ECE 4760Digital Systems Design Using Microcontrollers.
Next up, Dog, the robot cucumber!