"I want a robot dog."

This begins this adventure: having just emerged from a difficult period, during a complicated phase, the desire to start again returns. I'm Francesco.

I had never explored this topic—I knew of Boston Dynamics and assumed their products were out of reach. But this time, I decided to dig a bit deeper. I was aware of Unitree (I had seen some of their models), but nothing convinced me completely.

So I asked ChatGPT how to build a robot dog and discovered a project called ARES Open Source. I wanted to build it—and I did.

However, this “dog,” like all other open-source alternatives, was far from easy to assemble; in fact, it was quite complex. As a total novice, I had to enlist the help of a professor, and the mechanical complexity created plenty of challenges.

That’s where the idea was born: to create a kit that could be assembled comfortably at home, very simple yet powerful enough to experiment with and to have a real robotic companion. The best of making, combined with the care of a dedicated company.