Stanford-developed Dog Robot Flips, Jumps

PALO ALTO, CA — Here's a new twist to robots.

The Stanford Student Robotics club’s Extreme Mobility team at the university has developed a four-legged robot that's capable of performing acrobatic tricks and traversing challenging terrain.

Stanford Doggo is available online, the Stanford News Service reported recently.

“We had seen these other quadruped robots used in research, but they weren’t something that you could bring into your own lab and use for your own projects,” said Nathan Kau, ’20, a mechanical engineering major and lead for Extreme Mobility. “We wanted Stanford Doggo to be this open source robot that you could build yourself on a relatively small budget.”

Whereas other similar robots can cost tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars and require customized parts, the Extreme Mobility students estimate the cost of Stanford Doggo at less than $3,000 – including manufacturing and shipping costs – and nearly all the components can be bought online, the news service added.

Stanford Doggo can walk, trot, dance, hop, jump and perform the occasional backflip. The students are working on a larger version of their creation, which is currently about the size of a beagle. They took a short break to present Stanford Doggo at the International Conference on Robotics and Automation on May 21 in Montreal, Canada.

By pushing the limits of the robot’s software, Stanford Doggo was able to jump up to 3½ feet off the ground.

If these students have it their way, the future of Stanford Doggo in the hands of the masses, the news service indicated.

Extreme Mobility is collaborating with the Robotic Exploration Lab of Zachary Manchester, assistant professor of aeronautics and astronautics at Stanford, to test new control systems on a second Stanford Doggo. The team has also finished constructing a robot twice the size of Stanford Doggo that can carry about 6 kilograms of equipment. Its name is Stanford Woofer.