Bittle X V2 isn't a toy that collects dust after a week. It's a fully open-source quadruped robot small enough to fit in your backpack but powerful enough to run in a university robotics lab.
At its core sits Petoi's BiBoard V1 — a custom ESP32-based board that drives 9 servo joints simultaneously, giving Bittle smooth, lifelike movement. It walks, trots, dances, does push-ups, and yes — backflips on voice command. All 35+ voice commands are processed on-chip with no Wi-Fi, no cloud, no latency.
For beginners, Petoi's Coding Blocks (a Scratch-like visual tool) gets you programming new behaviors in minutes. As your skills grow, you move to Python or Arduino C++ and access the same firmware layer researchers use. The underlying platform, OpenCat, is fully open-source with 2,500+ GitHub stars.
Hardware-wise, Bittle X V2 connects natively to Raspberry Pi 3/4/5 with no adapters, supports a wide range of external sensors (IR, distance, gesture, light), and accepts an optional robotic arm gripper. It's been used in autonomous swarm research at Carnegie Mellon and in STEM classrooms across the US.
One hour of battery. Micro-USB charging. Ships as a kit or pre-assembled. Ages 10 and up.
