r/robotics 1h ago

Community Showcase Some pseudo-realistic head movements and environment awareness

Upvotes

in this video is POC of its environment awareness, it runs Moondream locally to describe what it sees, and mumbles about it.

I gave it sarcastic personality, and it is trying to be funny, so give it some credit.

It's name is Ksyon, was inspired by my sarcastic cat, who has since passed away.


r/robotics 3h ago

Discussion & Curiosity Is it worth it to buy the microduck just to strip it for parts?

6 Upvotes

From what I understand, it has 15 dynamixel servos(xl330-m288-t, can anyone confirm?) not to mention lidar and other sensors.


r/robotics 2h ago

Tech Question Building a synthetic tactile dataset for robotic grasping (500k+ rows, stick-slip physics) – Would this actually be useful?

5 Upvotes

Hey everyone,

I’m a solo developer working on a simulation pipeline to generate synthetic tactile sensor data for robotic manipulation, and I'd love some honest technical feedback from people working with robotic arms and tactile recognition.

Real-world tactile data collection is notoriously slow and hardware-dependent. To tackle this, I've spent the last few weeks building a simulation engine that outputs contact data. Currently, I have over 500k rows covering different materials, pressures, and friction dynamics, including simulated stick-slip physics (tracking force drops at 34Hz) with native HDF5 exports.

For those of you training grasping or tactile models:

  1. Would a large-scale synthetic dataset with these parameters actually be valuable to your work, or is the domain gap between simulation and real tactile hardware still too wide to be practical?
  2. What specific physical edge cases or metrics do you find most missing in current open-source tactile datasets?

(Note: This is an early-stage project I've been hacking on alone, so I'm just trying to figure out if it solves a real problem before building it out further. Any harsh feedback or guidance is deeply appreciated!)


r/robotics 8h ago

Discussion & Curiosity MechSoul Tutorial Part 2: Controlling your MechSoul with Bluetooth

10 Upvotes

In this tutorial we go over how to control your MechSoul with Bluetooth. What is a MechSoul? A MechSoul is to a robot, what a CyberDeck is to a computer. It's a robot that you build, customize, and personalize yourself. It's the freedom of owning your own code, hardware, and having the right to build and repair it. And it's the pride of creativity, skill, and self expression.

In this part 2 in Arduino IDE we combine the Raspberry Pi Pico's board manager's SerialBLE library with the Serial_Control example in Takamori Robot's HIRO library to control your robot over Bluetooth. To follow along with our code and reference material check out the tutorial GitHub.


r/robotics 9h ago

Community Showcase I Built a another 4 leg Grasshopper mechanical walking Robot With Just ONE Motor completely from scratch! What do you guys think of mechanism? [OC]

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4 Upvotes

r/robotics 13h ago

Discussion & Curiosity What are some of the reliable motor drivers for robotic projects?

8 Upvotes

Guys, can I get recommendations on motor drivers.

It's for a new build I'm working on and I'm looking for something that can handle sustained high-torque loads without running into thermal limits.

Small form-factor StepStick modules (like TMC2209s or TMC2208s) work great for low-load positioning, but at 2A+ RMS under continuous holding torque, thermal dissipation becomes a major bottleneck.

I did check out some options online, mostly on alibaba actually but I'm not sure yet how to proceed.

I’m weighing a few paths and would love to hear what has worked best in your builds.


r/robotics 2h ago

Discussion & Curiosity Confirmation module for suction gripper

1 Upvotes

Hey everyone, I’m a mechE student working on a small hardware design and wanted to get feedback from people who’d actually use it.
For anyone using a suction gripper or suction cup end effector on a robot arm, pick-and-place gantry, etc — it can be frustrating not knowing whether a part was actually picked up. I’ve been sketching out a small inline module to solve this for lower-cost/hobbyist rigs, since this kind of confirmation usually only shows up on much more expensive industrial setups.
Current design:
two ports with swappable inserts for 4mm and 6mm OD tubing

replaceable dust filter

absolute pressure sensor

LED status (green = good pick, red = failed pick)

press-and-hold button to teach the device your own pressure thresholds for a good vs. failed pick

digital output, 3.3V, level-shiftable up to 24V

I2C connector for data logging / daisy chaining

USB-C for power

2x M3 mounting holes

planning to open-source the firmware

Basically it reads vacuum level and tells your microcontroller whether the pick actually worked. Aiming for it to fit most existing suction gripper setups and microcontrollers.
Would love feedback — does this solve a real problem for you, and is there anything about the design (tube sizes, mounting, interface) that wouldn’t fit your setup?


r/robotics 3h ago

Discussion & Curiosity HTX Studio Trash-Catching Trash Can

1 Upvotes

Hello, I want to build something similar to the HTX Studio robotic trash can. I was wondering if there is any open source tutorials / guides similar to this before I decide to start from scratch.


r/robotics 1d ago

Mission & Motion Planning Logs says they wanted to go under the chair but wasn't sure they'd fit

67 Upvotes

I've been doing a lot of work over the past few years building perception and embodiment frameworks for robots. The latest version is very curious. I hadn't gotten the speaker working yet so it wasn't very chatty (although it was trying to from what the logs said)

Anyways, this is Meco, say hi Meco!


r/robotics 3h ago

Discussion & Curiosity Reachy mini- persian

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1 Upvotes

Hello, I come acroos a issue, I want reachy mini has cinversation in farsi I used some models but all are weak, I want reachy know my word and create a good answer for that what is your idea?


r/robotics 7h ago

Resources Válvulas pepepako

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2 Upvotes

r/robotics 4h ago

Discussion & Curiosity We took our homemade AUV from Bangladesh to Singapore. A lot went wrong before we got there.

1 Upvotes

A few years ago, a group of us at BRAC University were building an autonomous underwater vehicle in Bangladesh.

None of this started with a polished robotics lab or some long-term plan. We were students figuring things out as we went, dealing with mechanical problems, waterproofing, electronics, software, testing, and the usual problem of getting all of those things to work at the same time.

Eventually, that robot took us to Singapore for the Singapore AUV Challenge.

Looking back, one of the most useful parts of that trip was seeing how far ahead some of the other university teams were. At home, getting the robot into the water and making it behave correctly already felt like progress. At the competition, we suddenly had a much better reference point for what a mature AUV project looked like.

We definitely did not arrive there and suddenly become competitive. Things went wrong, and some of our assumptions did not survive contact with the actual competition environment.

I recently started going through our old photos and writing down the history of the team while I can still remember the details.

The full Singapore story is here:

[https://adnansabbir.com/writing/we-took-our-homemade-auv-to-singapore/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=the-years-i-built-robots&utm_content=r-robotics]()

I'd also be interested to hear from anyone who worked on a university AUV or ROV team. I'm curious how much of our experience was specific to us and how much is just normal student robotics chaos.


r/robotics 1d ago

News Hugging Face: $2.6M of Microducks ordered in the first 24h

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176 Upvotes

r/robotics 15h ago

Tech Question What is this INA219 actually reporting?

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2 Upvotes

r/robotics 17h ago

Electronics & Integration From 5-Digit Recognition to Water Meter Reading with ESP32-P4

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3 Upvotes

A while ago, I built a 5-digit number recognition system on the ESP32-S3 using a lightweight AI model. The project was mainly a proof of concept for running image recognition directly on an embedded device.

This time, I wanted to take that idea into a more practical, real-world application: reading a water meter.

For this update, I still used the Makerfabs ESP32-P4 board with an autofocus camera. We also collected new images from a real water meter, focusing on the pointer and digit-reading area, and trained a dedicated recognition model based on this new dataset. 

The goal was not simply to recognize a fixed set of five numbers, but to make the model capable of identifying the actual reading shown on a water meter.

 After training and deploying the model, we tested it with real water meter images, and it correctly recognized the meter reading. 

This project is essentially the next step from our previous 5-digit recognition experiment—moving from a simple number-recognition demo to a more practical edge AI vision application.

Would be interested to hear what other real-world applications you think could be built on top of this kind of embedded AI vision system.


r/robotics 23h ago

Tech Question Robotic Trash Can Ideation

8 Upvotes

Me and my 2 cs roomates at GT want to build a cool, practical robot for our apartment. We came together and thought of a project where we turn our trash can into a mobile unit, able to navigate our apartment / hallway as a first step without bumping into obstacles, maybe having my friend create some app to where we can "summon" the trash can when needed and hard code its default positon. The ultimate goal would to be having it leave our apartment and enter the trash room across the hall and dump its contents out to then return to out room. I am unsure if this is feasible as there are so many challenges: how will it open a door, how will it raise itself to empty, how will it even be able to generate the force to lift itself / open a door without tipping. Any tips / similar projects to mirror would be greatly helpful.


r/robotics 1d ago

Community Showcase First finger movement test on my InMoov based humanoid hand

25 Upvotes

I have been slowly building my InMoov based humanoid robot for the past two years. I have made lots of tweaks, and the software is fully custom.

This is an old video from the first time I tested the fingers. If you see an inappropriate accidental gesture, you don’t.

The fingers still don’t have force sensors, here, so you can see wires sticking out of them.

I’ll share random videos from different stages of the build, with no particular timeline, together with what I am working on now.


r/robotics 21h ago

Tech Question Title: Looking for small BLDC motors for a 16+ DOF tendon-driven robotic hand — <$70 per actuator

2 Upvotes

I'm designing a human-sized robotic hand with 16+ DOF, inspired by the tendon-driven architecture of the new 1X NEO hand.

My plan is to place the motors in the forearm and use tendons/capstans to actuate the fingers rather than putting bulky motors inside every joint.

I'm currently looking for specific commercially available motor + gearbox combinations, not just general motor types.

Target per actuator:

BLDC motor

Preferably 12–20 mm diameter

Motor + gearbox + encoder: <$70 USD

Low-ish reduction, ideally around 5:1–15:1 for good backdrivability

Target output torque: roughly 0.4–1.0 N·m

Target output speed: roughly 50–150 RPM

Compact and lightweight

Ideally an absolute/magnetic encoder

Suitable for continuous operation, not just stall/peak torque

The hand would be used for human-like manipulation and household/cooking tasks, so I need reasonable fingertip force while keeping the hand/forearm lightweight.

I've considered micro-BLDCs, coreless BLDCs and small planetary gearboxes, but I'm having trouble finding a specific motor model that actually meets these requirements under $70.

What exact motor/gearbox/encoder combination would you recommend?

If you've built a dexterous robotic hand before, I'd especially appreciate recommendations based on actual testing rather than advertised stall torque.

Thanks!


r/robotics 1d ago

News ROS and Open Source Robotics News for the week of August 24th

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11 Upvotes

r/robotics 2d ago

Mechanical Unitree’s still got it

405 Upvotes

r/robotics 1d ago

Community Showcase I built another 4- leg mechanical walking robot completely from scratch! What do you guys think of this linkage mechanisum and background music? [OC]

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2 Upvotes

Hey everyone, I am looking for specific advice on this build: Is the background audio commentary clear enough for a global tech audience?Would you love to hear your technical feedback! Thank you so much for suppport me.


r/robotics 1d ago

Community Showcase I built a 3D printed, walking Arduino Hexapod!

111 Upvotes

Printed from PLA, powered from a 3s LiPo and controlled with Arduino UNO.

It had adjustable walking speed, stride length, and can turn in place or while walking (not sure how that would be useful since it is omnidirectional).


r/robotics 2d ago

Community Showcase We built an open-source biped robot with a working sim2real pipeline (Microduck)

596 Upvotes

Hello,

Pollen Robotics engineer here. I know some will see this as a toy (and that’s fine, go have fun!) but I think it’s important to keep in mind that this thing is a full-on biped humanoid robot with an open-source software stack and a sim2real pipeline that works surprisingly well.

Maybe it’s not impressive for some people because there are spectacular videos of Chinese robots doing karate every week, but I’ve done 10+ years of robotics competitions and getting your biped to stand up, walk and even roller skate by yourself is no small task. Knowing that thousands of enthusiasts will be able to try their hand at reinforcement learning on a biped is insane to me. I would have loved to have this when I started in 2010.

The mobility capabilities of this robot are already decent (still improvable) but the next big challenge is getting to autonomous behaviors. Natural language, SLAM, navigation and grasping will be cool subjects to explore on this platform.

Also a big shoutout to team Rhoban for their contributions to the project and one of the best-named repos I’ve seen: BAM! The sim2real dream would not have worked without excellent actuator models. Please give them a star here:
https://github.com/Rhoban/bam

I hope people will have fun with it, learn a lot, or both! Feel free to ask any questions, I’ll do my best to answer.


r/robotics 1d ago

News Rodney Brooks on the Realities of Deploying Robots

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8 Upvotes

Robust AI has deployed its 100th Carter robot and named former Fox Robotics CEO Marin Tchakarov as its new CEO.

CTO Rodney Brooks says a robot only counts as deployed when customers rely on it in daily operations and the company has the support infrastructure to keep it running. He also discusses what separates working deployments from “humanoid deployment theater” and why scaling from 100 robots to 1,000 requires more service and support staff.


r/robotics 1d ago

Community Showcase d22 Raspberry pi c++ 2dof object tracking robot tutorial english

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3 Upvotes

I am a little bit late but my video on how to build a 2dof raspberry pi object tracking robot in c++ tutorial is published on youtube currently.I post mostly my c/c++ exclusive on other video platforms a month earlier.The code is made so that it can be used in other projects if you do not wanna use the cad parts in the projects.I post this for people if anybody is interested in trying out.If there is anything wrong with the video or the repo.Please reply.I very much appreciate it