On Mar 9, 2022 the first prototype of the flatcat robot became a two years old. The robot is still healthy and functional. It is used on a daily basis by @x75 to control his weird synthesizers (“huh, but the sound is gloomy… 🥶”). What is happening there? It is happening that the motion of the robot is controlling the sound. Wah!
You can enjoy all of this in one single piece in the video below. If you cannot get enough, there is two more of them. Find them on Youtube and post the links in the comments. Thanks for hanging in ♥️
The first prototype of the #flatcat robot just had her second anniversary. On the occasion they had a party with some friends over until they dropped.
Very pleased to announce that flatcat has been selected as a finalist for the Robot Design Competition during ICSR 2021 – International Conference on Social Robotics, 10-13 November 2021, Singapore, https://colips.org/conferences/icsr2021/wp/competition/
Update – List of finalists for robot design competition at International Conference on Social Robotics 2021 has been posted with flatcat on there 🐛
It was an difficult Birth! But they are fresh Born now 😉 and Hopfully curios to the World and Envoirment soon! With your help they will Constantly learn, play and can bring a lot of Joy in your Life! So lets start the first Journey with our first five Flatcats!
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
Printing of parts has finished with this stack of tail pieces
The first ten energymodules successfully assembled and tested for basic function. This board goes into the tail piece shown above.
Starting with the stock motors, replacing dumb boards …
… with smart sensorimotors, our Supreme motor control IP.
First thirty motors fully assembled and ready for electro-mechanical testing.
fur
Washing test of flatcat fur, all three types of fur freshly washed at 40 degree C, which they all seem to have survived well, healthy, and in shape. The grey and the red fabric have arrived and we expect the first few furs from the production batch to be delivered to the lab tomorrow. Golden autumn supplies are expected sometime this or the next week.
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.
👘 cognition wear
All three base colors for the jetpack sweater successfully prototyped and ready to be made in batch and brought to the street.
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.
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.
Plain PCB with reflow paste applied
Mask used for applying reflow paste
Close-up of paste pads
Manual placement of components on paste pads
16 piece mini-batch
Close-up of single baked board
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.
These are the three top current candidates that you will be able to choose from prior to shipping. The red one on the left and the stripy one on the right are finished furs, the golden one in the middle is a mockup where we just folded the cloth. We will be testing these and order the supplies for making five or so of each of them.
Bakiwi workshopSept 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
Unsoldering reverse mount LEDs
Battery pack heat catastrophy
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.
Owald setting up the rat guide
Rat guide floorplan
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.
jetpack sweater base color black. Note another new random variation of the logo mutant pattern inset.
But then taste this full use case as a robot pet holder, observed recently outside our lab.
The ultimate use case. Robot pet people wear cognitive.
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.
True color photo-samples of t-shirt base colors.
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.
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.
We are live with Bakiwi 64 – our first campaign on Kickstarter now
Our top product is Bakiwi Kit which stepped on the market from the lab just three months ago. The current estimated wild population of Bakiwis is between 20 and 50 individuals. It’s a very small number, close to extinct.
We want to help the species along and create more Bakiwis to join the wildlife. This is where you are needed. We can make the Bakiwis but we cannot look after all of them on our own.
Check the the Bakiwi shop to get to know the Bak closer, leave us some feedback on the campaign preview over at kickstarter, and
yes please
leave us your email to get notified when the campaign goes hot, and other activities with the jetpack.
