Open source balancing robots, hardware and software.
We build robots with fully open source hardware and software. Check out robot videos on YouTube.
Our software is made of open source libraries, not a framework:
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Upkie is a homemade wheeled biped that can balance, crouch and turn around. Its first version proudly stands on broomsticks and 3D printed parts 😉
Living room roaming (video)
Knees slightly bent (video)
There is a design difference between frameworks and libraries. Both have their pros and cons and there is no out-of-context answer as to which approach is "better" than the other. The reason why we strive for libraries is that frameworks or toolkits tend to couple multiple design decisions together, whereas libraries do better at incremental buy-in. For example, you can use the inverse kinematics of Upkie even if your robot is an hexapod and doesn't have wheels. We hope this helps makers adapt locomotion algorithms to new original robots, not adapt new robots to be able to run the same algorithms as the existing ones.
We hope it can: the more we are, the more experience we can share, and the more battle-tested our software! To join our gang, your robot must be fully open source, both in terms of hardware and software. Here is our attempt at defining that:
Chime in on GitHub if you check all these points!
You don't have to open source all of your code, only the part that is necessary to make your robot move. That being said, to engage with fellow robot makers, it is usually a good idea to open source code that can be referenced in discussions and tested by others.