Nybble

A wood colored robotic cat, with wires and assemblage visible. It has bright blue eyes and wood cut ears. — Meow you doing? Photo: Petoi

Nybble is a little robot cat designed to help hobbyists and students get started with legged robotics. It comes as a kit consisting of wood parts, used to assemble the robot's body, plus the electronics, which includes a control board, sensors, LEDs, servo motors, and a battery. Friendly software tools get your little legged friend walking around and doing tricks.

Creator

Petoi

Year

2018

Country

United States 🇺🇸

Categories

Consumer

Features

Did you know?

Nybble gets its name from the word "nibble," which means a small bite or, in computing, half of a byte.

A large green chip is seen on. the back of a wood colored robotic cat. — The source of my power. Photo: Petoi

A big-eyed robotic cat stares at the camera in front of hands coding on a laptop. — Can we play? Photo: Petoi

History

Nybble was created by Petoi, a robotics company founded by Rongzhong Li that focuses on robots for hobbyists and STEM education.

Li started the project in 2016, as OpenCat, an open source robotic pet framework. In 2018, he built a prototype four-legged robot that ran on OpenCat and commercialized it as Nybble.

In 2020, Li developed an even more adorable quadruped, this time based on a dog, that was more robust and agile than previous models. He called the new robot Bittle, and launched the project as a robotics kit on Kickstarter, raising more than U.S. $500,000.

Nybble and Bittle are open source, fully programmable, and controlled by desktop and mobile apps. The robots are based on the Arduino controller board, and their capabilities can be expanded using popular open source hardware such as Raspberry Pi and Arduino-compatible modules to make robots sense and interact with people and objects.

Petoi says it's shipped over 15,000 robots worldwide so far.

A robotic cat made of wood-cut parts, wires, and tech stands on two paws. — I'm purr-fect, don't you think? Photo: Petoi

A robotic cat among many robotic dogs. — First came Nybble, then came Bittle. Photo: Petoi

Specs

Overview: Bio-inspired movements, compact, modular. Laser cut wood puzzle frame, spring-loaded joints. Supports Arduino modules and Raspberry Pi. Programmable on a Scratch-like environment/C++/Python. Two speeds: 1.5 km/h walking; 2km/h running.
Status: Ongoing
Year: 2018
Website: petoi.com/pages/nybble-cutest-bionic-robot-cat
Width: 11 cm
Height: 15 cm
Length: 25 cm
Weight: 0.32 kg
Speed: 1.5 km/h
Sensors: Eye with ultrasonic distance sensor; torso with TDK InvenSense MPU6050 6-axis sensor, infrared receiver, joints with potentiometer for position control servos, head with extensible modules, such as light, distance, touch, gesture, intelligent camera, and voice command module.
Actuators: 11 Petoi digital PWM metal or plastic-geared servos driven by brushed coreless motors.
Degrees of Freedom (DoF): 11 DoF (Neck: 2 DoF; Arm: 2 DoF x 2; Leg: 2 DoF x 2; Tail: 1 DoF)
Materials: Laser-cut wood in a interlocking puzzle-style, springs
Compute: Main board with ATmega328P or ESP32 chip for motion control. Compatible with Raspberry Pi as main controller. Microcontroller chip in each joint's servo.
Software: Petoi desktop app for Mac/Windows/Linux, Petoi mobile app on Android/iOS, Arduino C++, Python, and ROS.
Power: 7.4V 1000mAh 2S lithium-ion battery pack, 1 hour of continuous walking
Cost: US $299