Xiaomi’s quadruped CyberDog 2 will make a “whirlwind tour” of its outlets in 80 cities nationwide from September 1 to 28, Xiaomi Group CEO Lei Jun said on September 2.
The legged robot, which Lei unveiled during his annual speech at Xiaomi’s product launch in August, has gone on sale via the online sales channels of the internet giant.
Nonetheless, Xiaomi’s corporate statement didn’t clarify what “whirlwind tour” refers to, or whether it means to hit the offline stores operated by Xiaomi.
With a sticker price of 12,999 yuan (US$1,788.57), CyberDog 2 is a successor to CyberDog, which made its debut two years ago.
Compared to CyberDog, the new release is more akin to a real canine in appearance, in addition to being 16% smaller and 40% lighter.
Lei, who is also founder and chairman of Xiaomi Group, said these upgrades are partly a result of AI-driven deep learning based on imitations of 30,000 canines, Lei stated.
Blessed with a computing power of 21 TOPS, CyberDog 2 supports interaction through gesture, voice command, facial recognition, and AIoT connection. It can be made to follow its master and detect and avoid obstacles on its own.
CyberDog 2 comes with 12 self-developed CyberGear micro-sized motors. Utilizing self-balancing AI algorithms, and an AI-powered multimodal fusion sensing and decision-making system, the robot dog can scurry at 1.6m/s.
Xu Duo, vice president of Xiaomi’s smartphone buiness and general manager of its robotic affiliate, told ifeng.com, a news portal in an interview that as the industrial chain steadily becomes mature, smart high-tech products like Xiaomi’s quadruped will likely see its price more than halved to below 5,000 yuan.
From the hardware perspective, robot dog is quite mature by now, so everyone in the industry has a strong motivation to commercialize it, Xu explained.
