Open-source robotics

Open source robotics means that information about the hardware is easily discerned, so that others can easily rebuild it. In turn, this requires design to use only easily available standard subcomponents and tools, and for the build process to be documented in detail including a bill of materials and detailed ('Ikea style') step-by-step building and testing instructions. (A CAD file alone is not sufficient, as it does not show the steps for performing or testing the build). These requirements are standard to open source hardware in general, and are formalised by various licences, certifications, especially those defined by the peer-reviewed journals Journal of Open Hardware and HardwareX.

Licensing requirements for software are the same as for any open source software. But in addition, for software components to be of practical use in real robot systems, they need to be compatible with other software, usually as defined by some robotics middleware community standard.

Applications to date include:

• Robot arms, e.g. PARA{{cite journal

| last1 = Tai | first1 = Albert

| last2 = al | first2 = et

| year = 2021

| title = PARA: A one-meter reach, two-kg payload, three-DoF open source robotic arm with customizable end effector

| journal = HardwareX

| volume = 10

| issue = 209

| pages = e00209

| doi = 10.1016/j.ohx.2021.e00209

| pmid = 35607683

| pmc = 9123426

| url = https://www.hardware-x.com/article/S2468-0672(21)00038-9/fulltext

}}{{cite journal

| last1 = Manzoor | first1 = Sarah

| last2 = al | first2 = et

| year = 2014

| title = An open-source multi-DOF articulated robotic educational platform for autonomous object manipulation.

| journal = Robotics and Computer-Integrated Manufacturing

| volume = 30

| issue = 3

| pages = 351–362

| doi = 10.1016/j.rcim.2013.11.003

| url =https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0736584513001002

| url-access = subscription

}} or Thor{{cite web

| title = The Thor open-source robotic arm

| url = http://thor.angel-lm.com/

| access-date = 2024-10-20

}}

• Wheeled mobile robots. e.g. OpenScout{{cite journal

| last1 = Carter | first1 = Sam

| last2 = Tsagkopoulos | first2 = Nikolaos

| last3 = Clawson | first3 = Garry

| last4 = Fox | first4 = Charles

| year = 2023

| title = OpenScout: Open Source Hardware Mobile Robot

| journal = Journal of Open Hardware

| volume = 7

| issue = 1

| doi = 10.5334/joh.54

| doi-access = free

| url = https://github.com/cbedio/OpenScout

}}

• Four-legged robots such as the Open Dynamic Robot Initiative

{{cite journal

| last1 = Grimminger | first1 = F

| last2 = Meduri | first2 = A

| last3 = et | first3 = al

| year = 2020

| title = An Open Torque-Controlled Modular Robot Architecture for Legged Locomotion Research

| journal = IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters

| volume = 5

| issue = 2

| pages= 3650–3657

| doi = 10.1109/LRA.2020.2976639

| arxiv = 1910.00093

| s2cid = 203610542

}}

• UAV quadcopters such as Agilicious{{cite journal |last1=Foehn |first1=Philipp |last2=Kaufmann |first2=Elia |last3=Romero |first3=Angel |last4=Penicka |first4=Robert |last5=Sun |first5=Sihao |last6=Bauersfeld |first6=Leonard |last7=Laengle |first7=Thomas |last8=Cioffi |first8=Giovanni |last9=Song |first9=Yunlong |last10=Loquercio |first10=Antonio |last11=Scaramuzza |first11=Davide |title=Agilicious: Open-source and open-hardware agile quadrotor for vision-based flight |journal=Science Robotics |date=22 June 2022 |volume=7 |issue=67 |pages=eabl6259 |doi=10.1126/scirobotics.abl6259 |pmid=35731886 |arxiv=2307.06100 |s2cid=249955269 |language=en |issn=2470-9476}}
• Humanoid robots, e.g. iCub, Berkeley Humanoid Lite{{cite arXiv |last1=Chi |first1=Yufeng |last2=Liao |first2=Qiayuan |last3=Long |first3=Junfeng |last4=Huang |first4=Xiaoyu |last5=Shao |first5=Sophia |last6=Nikolic |first6=Borivoje |last7=Li |first7=Zhongyu |last8=Sreenath |first8=Koushil |title=Demonstrating Berkeley Humanoid Lite: An Open-source, Accessible, and Customizable 3D-printed Humanoid Robot |year=2025 |eprint=2504.17249 |class=cs.RO }}
• Self-driving cars, e.g. OpenPodcar{{cite journal

| last1 = Camara | first1 = Fanta

| last2 = Waltham | first2 = Chris

| last3 = Churchill | first3 = Grey

| last4 = Fox | first4 = Charles

| year = 2023

| title = OpenPodcar: An Open Source Vehicle for Self-Driving Car Research

| journal = Journal of Open Hardware

| volume = 7

| issue = 1

| doi = 10.5334/joh.46

| doi-access = free

| arxiv = 2205.04454

}} (→ Personal rapid transit)

• Robot fish, eg. OpenFish{{cite journal

| last1 = van den Berg | first1 = Sander

| last2 = Scharff | first2 = Rob

| last3 = Rusák | first3 = Zoltan

| last4 = Wu | first4 = Jun

| year = 2022

| title = OpenFish: Biomimetic design of a soft robotic fish for high speed locomotion

| journal = Hardware X

| volume = 12

| pages = e00320

| doi = 10.1016/j.ohx.2022.e00320

| doi-access = free

| pmid = 35694325

| pmc = 9178345

| arxiv = 2108.12285

}}

• Laboratory robotics such as chemical liquid handling {{cite journal

| last1 = Faina | first1 = Andres

| last2 = Nejati | first2 = Brian

| last3 = Stoy | first3 = Kasper

| year = 2020

| title = Evobot: An open-source, modular, liquid handling robot for scientific experiments.

| journal = Applied Sciences

| volume = 10

| issue = 3

| pages = 814

| doi = 10.3390/app10030814

| doi-access = free

}}

• Vertical farming{{cite journal

| last1 = Wichitwechkarn | first1 = Vijja

| last2 = Fox | first2 = Charles

| year = 2023

| title = MACARONS: A Modular and Open-Sourced Automation System for Vertical Farming

| journal = Journal of Open Hardware

| volume = 7

| issue = 1

| doi = 10.5334/joh.53

| doi-access = free

| arxiv = 2210.04975

}}

• Swarm robots, e.g. HeRoSwarm{{cite book

| last1 = Starks | first1 = Michael

| last2 = et | first2 = al

| chapter = HeRoSwarm: Fully-Capable Miniature Swarm Robot Hardware Design with Open-Source ROS Support

| year = 2023

| title = 2023 IEEE/SICE International Symposium on System Integration (SII)

| pages = 1–7

| doi = 10.1109/SII55687.2023.10039174

| arxiv = 2211.03014

| isbn = 979-8-3503-9868-7

| s2cid = 253384613

}}

• Domestic tasks: vacuum cleaning{{Broken anchor|date=2025-06-17|bot=User:Cewbot/log/20201008/configuration|target_link=Robotic vacuum cleaner#Open-source designs|reason= The anchor (Open-source designs) has been deleted.|diff_id=1283333601}}, floor washing{{cite web|url=https://github.com/saiyam-agrawal/Floor-Cleaning-Robot-v2?tab=readme-ov-file|title=Floor cleaning robot|website=GitHub |access-date=13 September 2024}} and grass mowing{{cite web|url=https://github.com/ClemensElflein/OpenMower|title=Open Mower|website=GitHub |access-date=13 September 2024}}
• Robot sports including robot combat{{cite web|title=Open builds Battlebots|url=https://us.openbuilds.com/battlebots/}} and autonomous racing{{cite web|title=f1tenth|url=https://f1tenth.org/}}
• Education{{cite book |last1=Vrochidou |first1=Eleni |last2=Manios |first2=Michail |last3=Papakostas |first3=George A. |last4=Aitsidis |first4=Charalabos N. |last5=Panagiotopoulos |first5=Fotis |title=2018 26th International Conference on Software, Telecommunications and Computer Networks (SoftCOM) |chapter=Open-Source Robotics: Investigation on Existing Platforms and Their Application in Education |date=September 2018 |pages=1–6 |doi=10.23919/SOFTCOM.2018.8555860|isbn=978-9-5329-0087-3 |s2cid=54438146 }}

{{See also|List of open-source hardware projects#Robotics|l1=List of open-source robotics hardware}}

Most open source hardware definitions allow non-open subcomponents to be used in modular design, as long as they are easily available. However many designs try to push openness down into as many subcomponents as possible, with the aim of ultimately reaching fully open designs.

Open hardware manual-drive vehicles and their subcomponents, such as from Open Source Ecology, are often used as starting points and extended with automation systems.

Open subcomponents can include open-source computing hardware as subcomponents, such as Arduino and RISC-V, as well as open source motors and drivers such as the Open Source Motor Controller and ODrive.

Open source robots are often used together with, so are designed to interface to, the open source robotics middleware Robot Operating System and various open source simulators such as Gazebo, running on the open source Linux operating system.

{{See also|List of free and open-source software packages#Robotics|l1=List of open-source robotics software}}

Robotics middleware is software which links multiple other software components together. In robotics, this specifically means real-time communication systems with standardized message passing protocols. The predominant open source middleware is ROS2, the robot operating system, now as version 2. Other alternatives include ROS1, YARP — used in the iCub, URBI, and Orca.

Most robot sensors and actuators require software drivers. There is little standardization of open source software at this level, because each hardware device is different. Creating open drivers for closed hardware is difficult as it requires both low level programming and reverse engineering.

Open source robotics simulators include Gazebo, MuJoCo and Webots. Open source 3D game engines such as Godot are also sometimes used as simulators, when equipped with suitable middleware interfaces.{{Citation |last=nordstream3 |title=nordstream3/Godot-4-ROS2-integration |date=2025-03-07 |url=https://github.com/nordstream3/Godot-4-ROS2-integration |access-date=2025-03-09}}{{Cite web |title=ProviewR X Godot |url=https://www.nexedi.com/blog/P-OSIE-Blog.ProviewR.Godot |archive-url=http://web.archive.org/web/20240302131907/https://www.nexedi.com/blog/P-OSIE-Blog.ProviewR.Godot |archive-date=2024-03-02 |access-date=2025-03-09 |website=Nexedi}}{{Cite arXiv |eprint=2412.18408 |last1=Peraltai |first1=Daniel |last2=Qin |first2=Xin |title=Exploring Flexible Scenario Generation in Godot Simulator |date=2024 |class=cs.AI }}{{Citation |title=plaans/gobot-sim |date=2025-01-27 |url=https://github.com/plaans/gobot-sim |access-date=2025-03-09 |publisher=PLAN @ LAAS (plaans)}}

At the level of AI, many standard algorithms have open source software implementations, mostly in ROS2. Major components include:

• Machine vision systems such as the YOLO object detector.
• 3D photogrammetry{{cite book |last1=Jensen |first1=Austin M. |last2=Morgan |first2=Daniel |last3=Chen |first3=YangQuan |last4=Clemens |first4=Shannon |last5=Hardy |first5=Thomas |title=Volume 3: ASME/IEEE 2009 International Conference on Mechatronic and Embedded Systems and Applications; 20th Reliability, Stress Analysis, and Failure Prevention Conference |chapter=Using Multiple Open-Source Low-Cost Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) for 3D Photogrammetry and Distributed Wind Measurement |date=1 January 2009 |pages=629–634 |doi=10.1115/DETC2009-87586|isbn=978-0-7918-4900-2 }}
• SLAM such as gmapping
• Mobile robot planning such as move base
• Arm inverse kinematics such as moveIt

The first signs of the increasing popularity of building and sharing robot designs were found with the maker culture community. What began with small competitions for remote operated vehicles (e.g. Robot combat), soon developed to the building of autonomous telepresence robots such as Sparky and then true robots (being able to take decisions themselves) as the Open Automaton Project. Several commercial companies now also produce kits for making simple robots.

The community has adopted open source hardware licenses, certifications, and peer-reviewed publications, which check that source has been made correctly and permanently available under community definitions, and which validate that this has been done. These processes have become critically important due to many historical projects claiming to be open source but them reverting on the promise due to commercialisation or other pressures.

As with other forms of open source hardware, the community continues to debate precise criteria for 'ease of build'. A common standard is that designs should be buildable by a technical university student, in a few days, using typical fablab tools, but definitions of all of these subterms can also be debated.

Compared to other forms of open source hardware, open source robotics typically includes a large software element, so involves software as well as hardware engineers. Open source concepts are more established in open source software than hardware, so robotics is a field in which those concepts can be shared and transferred from software to hardware.

While the community in open source robotics is multi-faceted with a wide range of backgrounds, a sizable sub-community uses the ROS middleware and meets annually at the ROSCon{{cite web

| title = ROSCon

| url = https://roscon.ros.org/

| access-date = 2024-10-20

}} conference to discuss development of ROS itself and automation components built on it.

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Category:Robotics