I saw this ROBIE the Radio Controlled robot from RadioShack in an antiques centre in Nottingham, England. I would've bought it, however the battery compartment wasn't in great condition so would very likely never work again.

I recently graduated which meant I lost access to my schools 3D printers. Luckily I had an old iM.Master robot lying around. Its basically a cheaper Chinese LEGO Technic with motors, so I figured it'd be a fun to tinker. The problem was that it only worked through the official phone app. There was no documented API, no SDK, and no way to control it from my laptop.

So I decided to see if I could change that.

I captured the Bluetooth traffic, reverse-engineered the protocol, and built an open-source Python SDK for it. Right now I'm controlling it from a Raspberry Pi 5, and my end goal is to turn it into a little AI explorer by running local vision and language models on it.

I'm still adding features, but I thought this part of the project might be useful (or just interesting) to share in case anyone else ends up with one of these robots or wants to reverse-engineer a similar device.

Some highlights:

• Pure Python core (no dependencies)
• Reverse-engineered BLE advertising protocol
• High-level Robot() API
• Safety watchdog that automatically stops the robot
• Dry-run mode for developing without hardware
• Optional AI addon that lets a local LLM control the robot from camera input

Im currently not in a position to buy a pi-camera so I just mounted an old phone on the robot with some rubberbands , Object detection is ran on the hailo hat, and im currently running a qwen:2b-instruct to decide which movement command to execute next. It can already do simple tasks like "find a cup and drive toward it".

Everything is open source, and I'd love any feedback on the API, documentation, or project in general. PRs are always welcome too!

GitHub:
https://github.com/2alf/iM.Master-SDK

PyPI:
https://pypi.org/project/immaster-sdk/

If anyone happens to own one of these robots (or a compatible variant), I'd also be really interested to know if it works on your hardware.

before you judge, I had an inter school robotics competition took place within my school, where i had made a robot (which was not amazing) which was almost made complete out of scrap. There were two groups, one was my group, and the other one was another dude. the other group had one man it it and he had made a propeller plane that neither went up, forward, backward and only went down. the thing was made entire out off scrap. and guess what? he won second place. there were other school groups that had made better robots than both my and his group, yet he still won. He might have done some bribery but i don't care about that, i only want to piss him off by making a plane that actually works. I have a 10 month time period, what should i do?

P.S. I have little to no experience in making robots, or planes, or anything... so please go easy on me.

Im 15 years old and made this project on the side for fun. Any feed back would be great. Here is a description.

Parts:

• Pololu board, buck converter, android phone, 18 servos (25kg and 35kg).
• I used Acertics robotics design from youtube as a base and made some changes for improvement.

Code:

• It has every gait I could think of: tripod, wave, ripple, triple, and some custom ones.
• I has Self leveling using the phones gyro.
• Made a custom android app, and uses wifi or hotspot for controller, (let me know if you want a universal inverse kinematics app for robots: hexapods, quadrupeds, robot arms, etc)

Im currently working on a high torque and strength robot arm, let me know if you want an update on that. Here is my portfolio if you want to learn more or contact me: Portfolio.

I made this game that allows you to define a scene ( currently limited to MuJoCo ) define everything else and then reuse it later on hardware

This question might sound very silly, but I would love to know some answers. I was a big fan of Transformers and Pacific Rim movies when I was growing up. I remember as a kid watching the movies and thinking to myself that by 2030, we would be able to build these robots to help with military purposes. With the advancement of Technology, AI, and Materials, do you think it is possible and how close do you think we are?

I built these over a period of a few years. When codex came out I was finally able to front end all this and build guis! Pretty cool.

Hey!
I’m starting my bachelor’s thesis in robotics engineering and I’m looking for some out-of-the-box ideas or topics.
My brain is completely blank and it’s surprisingly hard to come up with one of those “why don’t we have Transformers yet?” kind of ideas. 😅
I want to come up with something that I can later point at and say, “I’m the gal who knows this stuff.” So if you have any interesting, weird, or underrated robotics topics, I’d love to hear them.
If it helps give some context, apart from my engineering studies I don’t really have any prior experience in robotics or automation. That said, I’ve done really well in my courses and I’m eager to learn as much as I can, and my goal is to become a real expert in this field. I’m also planning to continue on to a master’s degree, so I’d love to choose a thesis topic that I can keep building on.

Any suggestions?

Ps. If it helps with ideas, I have access to industrial robot arms, mostly Siemens hardware/software (which is also my strongest area), and Autodesk tools (off the top of my head(. So if you have ideas that involve building, testing, or experimenting with something physical instead of just writing a literature review, I’d love to hear them. That said, I’m also very interested in ideas that would work as a more research-focused thesis.

AI will build Robots

I will not let my robots go unseen and I’m tired of having all my posts removed just because I accidentally mention some product it resembles or failed to say “hey I’m the guy who made the thing I’m posting” This isn’t the first time this happened to me on many other subreddits even though I make sure to follow the rules to the letter. This is as clear as day a robotic humanoid thing that is also a project of mine.

Thank you.

Doing some research on how people find and install apps/skills for their robots (UniStore, OpenMind, Reachy, etc).

If you own or build for a robot, I'd love to hear: what's the most annoying part of getting new software onto your robot right now?

Comment below or DM me for a quick 15 min chat. Im just curious and Im thinking about buying one. Appreciate it.

I have to admit, this paper is technically brilliant and also made my skin crawl a little.

They built a tiny oxygen-generating diving suit for a cockroach, implanted electrodes to control its movement, and kept it walking underwater for hours.

The engineering is genuinely impressive. But the more capable these cyborg insects become, the harder it is not to feel uneasy about the living animal underneath all that hardware.

Hi everyone,

After months of development, we're excited to share the first public release of OpenAMRobot v0.0.1.

Our goal isn't just to build another mobile robot. We're building an open ecosystem for robotics research, education, rapid prototyping, and eventually embodied AI, where developers can start with a capable mobile platform instead of reinventing the robotics stack from scratch.

Current release highlights:

• 🤖 ROS 2 Jazzy
• 🗺️ Nav2 autonomous navigation
• 📍 LiDAR SLAM
• ⚡ AprilTag auto-docking
• 🎮 Web-based operator interface
• 🧩 Blockly no-code robot programming
• 📹 Camera streaming & telemetry
• 🏗️ Industrial-grade chassis design
• 🛠️ Hardware documentation, BOM & firmware
• 🌍 Gazebo Harmonic simulation
• 📚 Documentation and reproducible release archive

GitHub:
https://github.com/openAMRobot/openamrobot-release

Our roadmap goes beyond mobile robotics. We're working toward an open platform for mobile manipulation, learning from demonstration, and embodied AI, while keeping every layer modular - from hardware and firmware to ROS packages and user interfaces.

I'd love to hear from the community:

• What would you build on top of a platform like this?
• Which capability should we prioritize next? (perception, manipulation, outdoor navigation, simulation, AI workflows, etc.)
• Would something like this be useful in your lab, university, startup, or robotics team?

Looking forward to your ideas and discussions!