A robotic dog that can dance, do flips and jump has been created by a team of students – and they are encouraging people to build their own. The robo-dog senses when it is out of position and uses ‘virtual springs’ to pop upright with precision. It has been created with the goal of being reproduced by anyone and the team has published their designs and blueprints online to encourage people to make their own robots. Doggo’s creators wanted to share their joy so much they have made the plans, code and a supply list all freely available on GitHub, a specialist platform for developers to share computer code. On the Stanford Doggo Project Github blog, the students describe themselves as undergraduate and graduate students in the Stanford Student Robotics club and part of the club’s ‘Extreme Mobility team’. The students wrote: ‘We have been working on legged robots for the last year and a half. ‘Our latest robot, Stanford Doggo, is a shoebox-sized quadruped robot that can walk, trot, pronk, and jump around.’ Nathan Kau, a 20-year-old mechanical engineering major and lead for Extreme Mobility, said: ‘We had seen these other quadruped robots used in research, but they weren’t something that you could bring into your own lab and use for your own projects. ‘We wanted Stanford Doggo to be this open source robot that you could build yourself on a relatively small budget.’ Club members estimate the cost of Stanford Doggo at less than $3,000 (£2,364), a figure they say includes manufacturing and shipping costs and that and nearly all the components can be bought directly online. The four legged robot has been designed to navigate different terrains with the help of motors that sense external forces and determine how much force and torque each leg should apply in response.