At the end of Xiaomi's tech launch event for the Mi Pad 5, and Mi Mix 4 everyone was expecting them to announce something dramatic like a car, instead, we got an introduction to CyberDog, an open-source quadruped robot which is intended for developers to “build upon” and create apps for.
The programmable dog includes NVIDIA’s Jetson Xavier NX, a form of chip designed for AI autonomous creatures - it was developed alongside Intel which assisted in a depth-sensing module to avoid obstacles. It weighs just 3kg, has a 3.2 meter-per-second max speed, listens with 6 microphones, uses motors with a 32nm maximum torque, is topped with a large array of camera and imaging sensors, built-in GPS, and even has 128GB on-board storage.
Our new friend the CyberDog gave a performance which included a few tricks, like slowly rotating to view who was talking, a jiggle effect to mimic a dog shaking off water, getting up on its legs and clapping, and the all-famous backflip.
Check out this introduction video:
The Xiaomi Cyberdog, is going on sale in China soon for CNY 9,999 (about USD$1,500, £1,100, AU$2,100), quite a competitive price compare to Boston Dynamic’s Spot robot dog which costs around USD $74,500 (around £63,360, AU $125,000).