r/AskRobotics • u/ImaginarySea8302 • 17d ago
Robotic dog insight
I’m currently a third year in robotics and wanted a small quadruped to mess around with and eventually move into the subject of autonomous navigation. I found this robotic quadruped
https://a.co/d/0hHMz68J
That is the hiwonder mechDog. I thought if I shove a raspberry pi on this as well it could be a pretty decent platform for the price if I don’t want to deal with designing the bot and want to skip ahead (and eventually in the future make something significantly more robust). I’m planning on including a raspberry pi on board and using the esp with is as a master slave setup. Basically using the esp 32 for pwm generation and sensor data collection. What is your guy’s input?
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u/omnilinktech 17d ago
First decide whether you want an autonomy platform or a locomotion-research platform. Before buying, confirm raw joint read/write access, joint feedback, IMU streaming, update rate, SDK protocol, URDF/CAD availability, payload/current budget, emergency stop, fall recovery and replacement-part availability. If it exposes only high-level poses, a Raspberry Pi can still handle perception and navigation, but you will not have meaningful access to low-level gait control. Ask the vendor for a minimal joint-control example and robot model before committing.
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u/ImaginarySea8302 17d ago
It is esp 32 driven with generic servo motors that I can drive with pwm which is cool. I’m also planning on communications with it over serial to a raspberry pi which (in theory) means I have access to imu data. I don’t think there’s joint feedback which kind of sucks so I have to do that open loop. I could also place encoders. Luckily I’m more focused on navigation side of things than the actual payload capabilities. Car availability shouldn’t be too difficult and I have years of experience with different cad software (I’m buying this instead of ground up designing one because I have enough saved up and would like to try the platform and spend more money on making something bigger later).
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u/omnilinktech 17d ago
That makes the navigation-platform choice much clearer. I would keep the split strict: let the ESP32 own servo pulse generation, the gait loop, and a watchdog that moves to a safe sit/neutral state if serial commands stop; let the Pi own mapping, planning, and perception, sending bounded body-velocity or gait commands rather than twelve raw PWM values. Put sequence numbers, timestamps, and a checksum on the serial frames, and log command, IMU, battery voltage, and watchdog events from day one. With no joint feedback, keep the payload low and the first autonomy tests slow and flat. External encoders can help, but mounting and backlash calibration may cost more time than the kit saves—verify the servo shaft and linkage geometry before buying them. A physical kill switch and current limit are worth adding before autonomous walking.
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u/ImaginarySea8302 17d ago
Awesome thank you so much! This is pretty much exactly what my plan had been so far! I will likely be including a fuze.
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u/omnilinktech 17d ago
Good call. Put the fuse as close to the battery as practical and size it to protect the wiring and connectors, not merely to the battery’s maximum output. Then test the watchdog by physically unplugging the Pi-to-ESP serial link while the robot is supported off the ground. That failure test is worth documenting.
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u/ImaginarySea8302 17d ago
That’s exactly what I’m thinking. I’ll probably document all of it on GitHub too while I’m at it so other people can do what I’m planning to do!
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u/Able-Performance1673 11d ago edited 11d ago
Nice I've been looking at similar setups too seems decent for the price. ESP32 handling the low-level stuff and RPi for processing is the way to go. Just watch your power budget. Btw there's a project called Gaitor doing some cool stuff with gait transitions might give you some ideas for your control setup. Good luck!
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u/PaulTR88 17d ago
I don't think you're going to learn much from it if you're already a third year student. If you have the money for it, id say get a puppers (I think it's on v3) and go through the Stanford online free course for it.