James Bruton Designed His Newest Robot Dog for You to Build

We feature many of James Bruton’s projects here and he releases many of them as open source, but he doesn’t usually design them with your build in mind. That’s an important distinction, because open source projects thrive on user-friendly files and clean documentation. That is why, going forward, Bruton is putting extra effort into those areas, starting with this simple robot dog.

Everyone loves robopuppies, so this is a great starting point for Bruton’s new altruistic contributions to the open source community. And he’s taking that seriously, tailoring the design, files, distribution, and documentation to be accessible to makers that aren’t as experienced as him. The documentation starts with the video itself, which describes the CAD model, what you’ll want to 3D-print and how, and how to assemble the parts.

The design itself is also pretty nifty. It is simple and only requires six servo motors, thanks to clever linkages that let it walk with minimal actuation. Each knee has a servo to lift the leg, and the body has two servos to move diagonally opposed legs relative to each other across the ground. Unlike most other minimal builds, this has a very stable gait.

An Arduino UNO Rev3 board controls the servos directly, with power coming from a simple distribution board built on a prototyping PCB. That power comes from a hobby lithium battery pack.

As designed, this is intended for pre-programmed movements. But you can connect a USB cable to the Arduino and control the movement in real-time from a computer, or implement a remote control solution. Based on what I know of Bruton, I expect remote control will be part of many of his future releases.

For now, you can get the basic robot dog design files on GitHub. Or you can subscribe to Bruton’s Patreon to get access to the “enhanced downloads,” which are more comprehensive.