The author integrated the open-source vision-language navigation model LightNav-0 into the Microduck simulation (MuJoCo). The robot receives instructions such as "walk to the wooden door frame and stop," predicts a path from first-person frames, and executes it via MPC and the official ONNX gait policy.
Build artifacts for PhysiClaw hardware v0.45 have been released for assembling the PhysiClaw rig. Contents include a bilingual English-Chinese assembly manual (HTML+PDF with step-by-step SVG figures), a sourcing guide with technical drawings for the 7 frame extrusions, and STEP files for the 9 custom parts (recommended to print in black PA12 via SLS/MJF) along with a matching print guide.
An automation control and robotics engineering student built a pair of animatronic eyes using two servos (left-right and up-down), a 3D-printed frame, and an Arduino UNO. He developed a web app offering Spanish Scratch-style block programming, a simulator to preview movements before connecting, and direct USB program upload through the browser (Chrome or Edge); each block also shows its corresponding C++ code and can be downloaded as an .ino file.
Coding agents (from @claudeai, @OpenAI, @GoogleDeepMind) are opening new doors in robotics, but how can their code be tested quickly and iterated into better policies? Agentic Real2Sim answers: use RoboSimStudio to evaluate and improve the Push Letter Agent. (The main post comments on this: "Another exciting result in Agentic Robotics!")
Registration is open for the Xbotics × Motphys Fifth "Reinforcement Learning and Simulation Software" online training camp. The camp lasts eight weeks and is free of charge, and participants with zero reinforcement learning background may also join. All courses and training are hosted on the Qiaogong cloud, requiring only a browser locally.
This tutorial derives the Jacobian-transpose torque mapping and the task-space spring-damper law from the principle of virtual work, implements end-effector impedance control for the Panda arm in MuJoCo, and measures the quantitative effects of stiffness, damping, and anisotropic stiffness ellipsoids on compliance.
This analysis focuses on stepper motor motion control, covering three techniques: microstepping, S-curve acceleration/deceleration, and step-loss detection. Specific parameters and experimental details are currently unavailable; readers can focus on how these three types of control help improve the smoothness and reliability of stepper motor motion.
An analysis of the protocol stack implementation of the industrial communication protocol Modbus, covering the three modes RTU, ASCII, and TCP, RS485 half-duplex communication, and how master and slave stations are implemented, aimed at developers of robot and industrial device communication.
This analysis covers four core topics of the CAN FD bus: frame format, bit timing, error handling mechanisms, and the principles of dual-rate communication in the arbitration phase and data phase, explaining the foundational technical details of automotive and embedded bus communication for robotics developers.
The article reviews the history of collaborative robots from the 1990s to the 2020s: in 1996, GM and Northwestern University proposed the Cobot concept; in 2005, Universal Robots was founded and launched the UR5 in 2008; in 2015, Teradyne acquired UR for about 284 million USD; and in 2025, UR's cumulative global sales surpassed 100,000 units.
A Mecanum-wheel omnidirectional robot can be launched in Gazebo simulation with a single command. The article also explains how to solve the common problem of the wheels not turning in simulation. This is the first post in the tutorial series.
On the RDK X5 development board, the official stereo depth estimation model is only StereoNet (IGEV/GRU architecture); there is no smaller ready-made network. The available options are compiled versions such as V2.4_int8 (640x352x3x2, 23fps) and V2.4_int16 (15fps).
A user on r/robotics asked which components of collaborative robots (cobots)—motors, actuators, gears, or electronic parts—fail due to wear when running 18 hours a day on the same task for 2-3 years. The Chinese-made cobots they encountered had only run 5-10K hours, most users had not yet encountered failures, and some UR users said the equipment itself had no problems.
A developer receiving data on the RDK X5 via MIPI CSI-2 (DT=0x1E, pack_mode=1, 1080×2912, wstride 2160) found that the image area parses correctly as YUYV but shows wrong colors as UYVY, and that the 16-bit depth and metadata at the frame tail must be byte-swapped every 2 bytes before they can be parsed; GMSL Pixel Mode and Tunnel Mode give the same result.
Xbotics and the OpenLoong community jointly launched a robot motion control training camp, "Motphys + RSL-RL, from Simulation to Qinglong Nano Real Robot," at ROSCon China 2026, using two days to guide participants through the complete pipeline of policy reproduction, fine-tuning, simulation validation, ONNX export, and real-robot deployment.
The author integrated real Ouster OS0 lidar data and a fixed iPhone camera into a self-built "robot dojo" digital twin, correcting the camera/LiDAR calibration over three iterations; the first approach was off by about 0.5 meters and 0.4 meters too high.
A team built a proof-of-concept prototype for automated packing in a dark store using the open-source LeRobot SO-101 (SO-ARM101) 3D-printed robotic arm, winning first place at a hackathon. Targeting the high labor costs and slow picking of instant retail, the project used the Hugging Face-supported LeRobot ecosystem to complete teleoperation, data collection, and imitation learning within the hackathon timeframe, enabling the arm to reliably perform pick-and-place tasks, and released a 1-minute demo video.
The goal of functional safety is simple: keep people around the robot safe. Achieving it means designing for safety at every layer—electrical, mechanical, and industrial. Senior Director of Robot Safety Kevin Reese breaks it down in detail 👇 Watch the full explanation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpGs7DKe8QY #Agility #Safety #Digit #MadeForWork
Developers reported on the forum that submitting a task for an S100 quantized model failed and was not submitted to the cloud. Respondents pointed out that the official workflow is to use hb_compile on a development machine or inside Docker, which directly produces a .hbm file, with no cloud submission step. They also requested error logs, the quantization entry point (web page or command line), the ONNX export script, the opset version, input dimensions, and other information to determine whether the issue is a model/configuration problem or a platform task problem.
The ROSCon China 2026 OpenLoong Training Camp, themed "Bipedal Robot Reinforcement Learning Hands-On Practice: Motphys + RSL-RL, from Simulation to the Qinglong Nano Real Robot," will be held on October 17-18, 9:00-17:00, in Meeting Rooms A115 and A124 at Midea's Global Innovation Park in Shanghai.
AMD held a half-day hands-on workshop at ROSCon China 2026 for robotics developers and ROS users, covering and practicing an embodied AI development workflow that spans cloud training, simulation acceleration, on-device inference, and ROS 2 deployment.
A forum reply addressed the problem on RDK X5 where pack_image.sh in x5-rdk-gen requires sudo, while the server only grants ordinary user permissions. The cause is that the script needs loop mounting and chroot to package the rootfs partition, and the official documentation provides no root-free approach.
A hands-on record of sharing a phone's network with the RDK S100 over USB. The author first checked the documentation to confirm the interface limits: the Type-C (J16) port can only act as a Device, and the USB3.0 Type-A ports (J19/J20) can only act as a Host, so the phone must be connected to a Type-A port with the board acting as host. Since the official documentation does not cover this path, the author checked on the S100 whether the kernel includes the rndis_host, cdc_ether, and cdc_ncm drivers, then provided executable steps.
A developer encountered a boot issue while connecting a custom TOF SENSOR to an RDK X5 4GB board: flashing the platform img works normally, but after flashing the self-compiled platform_source_code, the board fails to boot.
JAKA Robotics has launched three new features for collaborative welding: real-time parameter adjustment, process parameter recommendations, and a quick-access button box. Built on its welding process package as the foundation, it has distilled four standardized solutions: JAKA EWT, JAKA PWT, JAKA TWC, and JAKA GWV. In four bridge steel structure and shipbuilding/marine engineering cases, gantry inverted welding reduced weld seam point adjustment to within 40 seconds, allowed a single operator to manage 2-3 devices, and increased capacity by more than 40%; the portable Zu3 solution, with a 12 kg body, works with a magnetic base and laser line scanning inside ship compartments.
A developer tested a Go2 equipped with dual SO-101 robotic arms and a 29-joint G1 in MuJoCo simulation within an office digital twin reconstructed from an Ouster OS0 LiDAR and phone imagery; this was purely simulation, not a real-robot demonstration. The G1 walking policy fell in all 12 trials on flat ground when an arm-raise motion was superimposed; a corrected Go2 grasp-and-place run landed 1.68 mm from the target, but reruns still failed. Inter-robot collisions were disabled in the shared scene, and multi-robot obstacle avoidance as well as mass and contact parameters remain to be validated.
A developer who has just spent four weeks getting started in robotics completed a differential-drive robot simulation in Gazebo and ROS 2 Jazzy, using SLAM for mapping and localization and Nav2 to autonomously navigate to target points in a maze map.
Robotics & Automation News published a qualification guide for SLS PA12 printed robot end effector parts, emphasizing defining loads and failure modes from the robot task rather than from material datasheets. The article proposes a phased validation sequence, from reduced-speed no-load motion checks to representative workpiece grasping tests with recording of wear and drift, and recommends keeping a list of critical functional dimensions, a spare-part replacement procedure, and a complete engineering brief for suppliers.
SROS2 builds on DDS Security to provide authentication, encryption, and access control for ROS 2, and command-line tools can be used to configure security policies and generate certificates for nodes. The article explains, in a hands-on way, how to enable SROS2 and DDS Security in ROS 2 to achieve secure communication between nodes.
This is a ROS2 hand-eye calibration tutorial that uses easy_handeye2 to calibrate a camera and a robotic arm.
A hands-on tutorial on ROS2 MoveIt Task Constructor that explains how to use it to orchestrate a complete task flow from grasping to placement, suitable for developers who want to master multi-stage task planning for robotic arms.
This is a hands-on ROS2 tutorial explaining how to use BehaviorTree.CPP behavior trees together with Nav2 to organize robot navigation decision logic. The body covers only the topic indicated by the title and provides no further details.
Introduces a hands-on approach to implementing web-based remote monitoring and control of ROS2 robots using rosbridge and roslibjs. The original content is limited to the topic stated in the title and provides no further technical details or metrics.
Explains ROS2 middleware (RMW) replacement and tuning, with hands-on operations centered on DDS and rmw_zenoh.
How to connect CANopen protocol motors to ROS2 using ros2_canopen to enable motor drive communication and control. Aimed at robotics developers and newcomers who need to drive CANopen motors in ROS2.
Introduces practical usage of Composable Nodes componentization and intra-process zero-copy communication in ROS 2. By loading nodes as components into the same process and enabling intra-process communication, data copies and transmission overhead are reduced, improving system operating efficiency.
This is a hands-on ROS2 image pipeline tutorial centered on three tools: cv_bridge, image_transport, and compressed transport. The article explains practical methods for handling image topic transport in ROS2, and is suitable for robotics developers learning to bridge, transport, and configure compression for visual data.
X5 algorithm toolchain materials remain accessible through two entry points: the standalone "X5 Algorithm Toolchain / X5 OE User Manual" (covering chapters such as environment installation, PTQ quantization and on-board deployment, QAT quantization-aware training, and embedded runtime development), and the algorithm toolchain chapter under advanced development in the "RDK X Series User Manual." The V1.2.8 documentation corresponds to RDK X5 system software 3.5.0; you can confirm the version on the board with cat /etc/version before selecting a package.
A father built a Python programming prototype tool for his fourth-grade son, letting the child write programs for a small car: turn 180 degrees in place, and drive along a complex route from the living room into the bedroom. The child completed two programs in the first hour, then played for four hours, using up two-thirds of the battery, and in the process practiced experimental design, drawing diagrams, and debugging problems in the physical world. The author is considering expanding the tool further.
The author built a robot-simulation room twin using an Ouster OS0 scan and a 13-second iPhone video, producing 116,492 room points, 78 aligned frames, a Gaussian splat, and 17 objects annotated in 5 cm voxels.