In the picture above, last flatcat of the 2021 Kickstarter campaign batch, packaged and ready to be shipped. By now we have word that it has arrived.
Very happy to be finishing our third crowd-funding campaign. This one was clearly the most challenging so far.
we
just
shipped 🛫 ♻️
the first 3️⃣ flatcats
🐛 🐛 🐛
ever
mega happy having shipped first 🐛🐛🐛 flatcat robots
most startups are in software
most startups never ship
we are a ecologically-minded two-tech-founders full-stack hardware-software AI-robotics company 100%-founder-owned and calling from #Berlin
Holler If Ya Hear Me ♻
Above all, infinite thanks to everyone who has so greatly supported us in this project. without you, this would not have been possible.
All our Kickstarter and Indiegogo backers, @qbernetik @o2 @__tosh wendelin weingartner, @zzkt @foam @hiaz @juliarehling, @evanackerman, @sansculotte, arglaaa, heike nehl, Andrew Liszewski, the berthold estate, karen ellmer, elle janssen, richard lem, marek claassen, tbc and shout out if we missed you
There is t-shirts. jetpack tee one arrived from direct-to-garment print. Campaign open for only six more days.
Important update regarding shipping
tl;dr Shipping has to be delayed by at least one month.
While we are busy all week pushing things ahead, we have come to run behind our planned schedule. There is two main reasons for this. The first one is big changes in both our personal lifes that require urgent attention. The second one is that we are beginning to feel the accumulated sum of small friction losses in sourcing as well as more administrative outside interactions.
Thus we have to update the timeline and push back the expected date for beginning to ship by one month to end of October 2021.
We do have four major tickets open before we can do that, which are assembly, furs, software updates, and packaging. Right now we are actively working on the first three of them. Packaging is still in the back row because we first need the set of shipped items to consolidate before it makes sense to design a packaging.
assembly
fur
flatcat UI
Here’s a first screenshot of how the update and configuration app could look like. Development is done in collaboration with Richard of mr. hide.
Campaign duration extended to end on October 11, 2021 11:59pm PDT
Delivery option pick-up-at-lab which has been requested cannot be added to claimed perks – please pledge for delivery to Germany and we will refund you when you pick up your items.
Thanks for looking, jet pack
Hi all, dumping a stack of updates from the last few days
flatcat PCBs in the house
The manufactured PCBs for sensorimotor & energymodule arrived at the lab yesterday. This lead to the first run of component placement and baking in the oven today, to obtain the fully assembled electronics boards required for making a flatcat. This seemed to have worked reasonably well and the first sensorimotor was put into operation successfully.
flatcat furs
Another fur has arrived this week from the prototyping done by our collaborator Karen Ellmer. The amount of available fake fur materials is pretty stunning. Right now we are working with a selection from the samples we have, to find a minimal functional design that we can ship with. Something that feels amazing and allows the cat to move freely.
Bakiwi workshop Sept 2021
The first Bakiwi workshop after lockdown took place on Saturday, quite successfully with nine (9) Bakiwis walking out the door on their own for nine teams of builders. It was great to have all of you and we hope you enjoyed as much as we did. To be done again, watch out for upcoming dates.
These are two examples of RTFM
We had a baby rat (some say it was a mouse) coming in for a visit. It then had to be removed from the premises via this contraption.
jetpack cognition wear
Our apparel campaign is coming along quite well, and like all that we do, subject to heavy development on the go. We now have demonstration exemplars for all three base colors. This is the black one, the lilac one will be posted soon.
But then taste this full use case as a robot pet holder, observed recently outside our lab.
For those of you who having one of the shirts, here is the true samples for the shirt’s base color. The jetpack tee two there is all of them in sizes S, M, L (limited quantities). For the direct-to-garment corporate insignia prints, we will only do anthracite and white. Go check.
Random stuff
We installed open graph and Twitter card plugins for our wordpress so social sharing is much improved with nice automatic summary previews.
Thank you, that’s it for today. As always, feel free to be in touch about your questions and comments, we hear you.
Cheers, opt + kubi @jetpack central 💮🎴🌸
Yuhu! The jetpack cognition wear merchandise campaign is live and online on Indiegogo since last Friday, Aug 27.
Wearing it looks like this, in front of the lab, and inside.
Is available in three base colors dark blue, black, lilac. Size can be chosen from standard size table, see campaign page for a size chart.
In addition to the amazing sweater designed and manufactured in cooperation with Elle Janssen / hit-in.tv, two types of printed t-shirts are available, the jetpack tee two (2), and the jetpack tee one (1).
jetpack tee two
Presseinformation, Berlin, 14. Mai 2021
Entweder haben Sie schon eins, oder Sie werden bald eins haben. Roboterhaustiere erobern die Verbrauchermärkte weltweit in Form von Babyrobben, Hundewelpen oder einem schwanzwedelnden Kissen. Jetzt bekommen sie Gesellschaft von einer überfahrenen Katze.
flatcat wurde von Gizmodo ((https://gizmodo.com/the-flatcat-cant-even-walk-but-its-instantly-the-creep-1846366550)) als “der gruseligste Roboter, den man je gesehen hat” betitelt, und das mag für einige tatsächlich so sein. Für viele andere ist es ein zugegebenermaßen seltsames, aber niedliches Roboter-Haustier, das sie umarmen und mit dem sie spielen wollen.
Die ersten paar Flatcats sind ab sofort und nur noch sieben Tage lang auf Kickstarter ((https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/bakiwi/flatcat), der beliebtesten Crowdfunding-Website, erhältlich. Die Kampagne steht kurz vor der Vollfinanzierung, braucht aber noch ein paar entscheidende Zusagen von Roboter-Enthusiasten aus nah und fern, die etwas bewegen wollen.
Der Roboter, der von Jetpack Cognition Lab , einem in Berlin ansässigen Unternehmen mit Grazer Wurzeln entwickelt und hergestellt wird, ist ein Roboter der neuen Art. Er ist völlig anders als alle anderen vergleichbaren Produkte auf dem Markt. Was ihn einzigartig macht, ist seine sensomotorische Kompetenz, die Kräfte seiner eigenen Bewegung und die von außen durch Menschen oder einfach durch die Schwerkraft erzeugten Kräfte zu spüren und darauf zu reagieren.
Die Fähigkeit, Kräfte direkt in den Gelenken zu spüren, erlaubt es Flatcat, neugierig zu sein und seinen eigenen Körper und die Welt auf die sicherste Art und Weise zu erkunden. Die Technologie dafür kommt aus dem Forschungsfeld der Entwicklungsrobotik, bei dem Teile der Entwicklung von Tieren und Menschen in Software und Algorithmen umgesetzt werden.
Mögliche Verwendungszwecke von flatcat sind als Haustier im Wohnzimmer, um einfach zu spielen und gemeinsam die Welt der sensomotorischen Erfahrung und Bewegung zu erkunden; als therapeutischer Roboter, um sanft einfache Bewegungen zu stimulieren, Gesellschaft und Trost zu spenden; oder als Desktop-Forschungs-Roboter für Wissenschaftler und Hacker:innen gleichermaßen, da er neben seiner hochmodernen sensomotorischen Sensibilität auch Open Source, erweiterbar und modifizierbar ist.
Seit seinen Anfängen im Jahr 2019 bringt Jetpack Cognition Lab radikale Innovationen aus der wissenschaftlichen Forschung auf den Konsumentenmarkt. Die Gründer des Labs sind Dr. Oswald Berthold und Matthias Kubisch. Sie lernten sich während ihres Studiums an der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin kennen und taten sich zusammen, um die schrägsten und lustigsten Roboter der Welt zu entwickeln.
Berthold ist ein in österreichischer Künstler-Technologe, geboren in Graz, der schon mit dem Kollektiv farmersmanual Musikgeschichte geschrieben hat, indem er neuartige Stile und innovative Ansätze zur digitalen Musikproduktion und -veröffentlichung im Internetzeitalter einführte. Spätestens seit er 2018 seine Promotion in Robotik innerhalb der Adaptive Systems Group der HU Berlin abgeschlossen hat, ist er damit beschäftigt, Grundlagenforschung in Kundennutzen zu verwandeln.
Kubisch ist ein deutscher Informatiker, Kreativer und Aktivist. Er hat als wesentliches Mitglied des Teams gearbeitet, das den modularen humanoiden Roboter Myon im ALEAR-Projekt unter der Leitung von Dr. Manfred Hild entwickelt hat. Außerdem hat er die Industrie von innen gesehen und Algorithmen zur Steuerung von elektrischen Kraftwerken entwickelt. Er ist nicht nur ein Experte für adaptive Echtzeitalgorithmen und maschinelles Lernen, sondern auch ein genialer Elektronikdesigner und Produktvisionär.
Press release, May 14 2021
You either have one already, you are going to have one soon. Robot pets are taking to consumer markets worldwide in the shapes of baby seals, dog puppies, or a tail-wagging cushion. Now they are getting company by an overrun cat.
flatcat has been titled “the creepiest robot ever seen” by Gizmodo and that may indeed be so for some. For many others, it is an admittedly strange yet cute robotic pet, which they want to hug and play with.
The first few flatcats are available right now for the first time, and only for seven more days, on Kickstarter, the most popular crowdfunding website. The campaign is close to being fully funded, but does need a few more and decisive pledges by robot enthusiasts near and far, who like to make a difference.
The robot, designed and manufactured by Berlin based Jetpack Cognition Lab, is one of a new kind. It is entirely different from all other comparable products on the market. What makes it unique is its sensorimotor competence, the ability to feel, and react to the forces of its own motion, and those created on the outside by humans or simply by gravity.
The ability to feel forces directly in its joints allows flatcat to be curious and explore its own body and the world in the safest way possible. The technology for doing that is coming from a research field called developmental robotics, where parts of the development of animals and humans are put into software and algorithms.
Possible uses of flatcat are as a living room pet to simply play with and jointly explore the world of sensorimotor experience and motion; as a therapeutic robot to gently stimulate simple motions, provide company and comfort; or as a desktop research robot for scientists and hackers alike, by being open source, extensible and modifiable in addition to its cutting edge sensorimotor sensitivity.
Since its beginnings in 2019, Jetpack Cognition Lab is pushing radical innovations from scientific research onto the consumer market. The founders of the lab are Dr. Oswald Berthold and Matthias Kubisch. They met during their studies at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, and teamed up to create the weirdest and funniest robots alive.
Berthold is an Austrian artist-technologist, born in Graz, and has previously written music history with the farmersmanual collective by introducing novel styles and innovative approaches to digital music production and publishing in the internet age. Since finishing his doctorate in robotics with the Adaptive Systems Group of HU Berlin in 2018, he is busy turning fundamental research into customer value.
Kubisch is a German computer scientist, creative and activist. He has worked as an essential member of the team that created the Myon modular humanoid robot in the ALEAR project led by Dr. Manfred Hild. Also he has seen industry from the inside developing electrical power plant control algorithms. On top of being an expert on realtime adaptive algorithms and machine learning, he is an ingenious electronics designer and product visionary.
your next robot is a desktop research robot
We believe that modern robotics/AI needs a boost from the bottom, to take another two to three steps back and take the time to close the sensorimotor gap and look intensively at learning procedures before moving on to higher function such as assistance for humans.
That’s why we developed flatcat as an open, extremely simplified platform from the ground up to enable people from different scientific and research fields, as well as developers and engineers, to develop their own applications or solve research questions with a real robot. flatcat is designed to be inexpensive and highly simplified, making it accessible to many.
flatcat is open-source in hardware, firmware and software. The circuits are just as studiable and expandable as the software. The mechanics are made of 3D-printed parts and can therefore be repaired and adapted over and over again. We use readily available off-the-shelf components as much as possible to ensure parts availability. The design is modular and expandable, e. g. more joints, different motors, new controllers, more sensors etc. The mechanics is portable and lightweight, i. e. results can be presented live, mobile use is possible, etc. The motion dimension of flatcat is 2-dimensional and the reduced complexity is initially very convenient for many problems, the robot can be maintained and operated by one person, (desktop research robot).
flatcat provides a Python/C++ interface for the development of applications. The host platform is a Raspberry Pi (Zero/W) with WiFi module which drives the motors via a symmetric, i. e. insensitive data bus (RS-485, 1MBaud).
The power supply can be 6-12V, the internal battery is a 2-cell lithium polymer battery with 7.4V nominal voltage (6.6 – 8.4V, low to high). A stationary power supply can also be connected.
The motor controllers are a Jetpack open-source development: called Sensorimotor. They have rich sensory feedback (bidirectional current, supply voltage, temperature, 300° position, and speed) and provide various control modes such as position PID and Cognitive Sensorimotor Loops (CSL). The motors can also be used for simple sound generation (Beta).
Just back from watching David Attenborough: A life on our planet.
If you haven’t, watch it. It’s on Netflix.
The movie makes a case on Biodiversity and highlights how biodiversity is connected in straightforward ways with our own health and prosperity. Remember that all of #Covid19 is itself only a part in an ongoing severe biodiversity crisis.
The view of earth shown in the picture above was not generally known to people before the late 1960s, except to a few imaginative visionaries. It is not about saving the planet though. It is about saving our own asses. Right here, right now. Anything else is procrastination, neglect, or worse. Anyway, lets not get stalled.
You ask, what does this have to do with Jetpack Cognition Lab? The answer is, just about everything. Read on to find out.
In whichever way exactly the sustainability turn is realized, there is going to be autonomous mobile robots in it.
These are likely scenarios but far from complete. Drones need support on the ground and up in the tree. They also need to go beneath the foliage because this is where it happens. That is all quite complicated stuff. The autonomous mobility of the robots we currently have is still a far cry from anything practically usable, and this includes affordable.
Mainstream promises have not realized anywhere despite trillions of sunk budgets, private and public. Remote death operations is as good as it gets.
The developments we are observing are not fast enough by some orders of magnitude. As more people need to be able to work on all that, the approach clearly needs to be massively diversified.
How is this done? You are right, with self-learning robots of course, with education and inspiration. This is a massive challenge and we need to take steps that might appear weird from the outside.
Where are you in this? We are very curious to learn and let us know anytime. Out here with the mobile Jetpack Cognition Lab and we need you support in every possible way.
Next, flatcat crowdfunding campaign.
flatcat is the next step towards creating robots that are built for learning all the way up. Does that scare you? good, this is how you and everyone else works, on the inside that is. Time to get to grips with yourself.