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{{Short description|Open-source branch of robotics}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=April 2023}}
[[Image:P058324-119830_(cropped).jpg|thumb|right|An open source [[iCub]] robot mounted on a supporting frame. The robot is 104 cm high and weighs around 22 kg.]]
'''Open-source robotics''' is a branch of [[robotics]] where robots are developed with [[open-source hardware]] and [[free and open-source software]], publicly sharing [[blueprint]]s, [[schematics]], and [[source code]]. It is thus closely related to the [[open design]] movement, the [[Maker culture|maker movement]]<ref>{{Cite book|last=Gibb|first=Alicia|title=Building Open Source Hardware: DIY Manufacturing for Hackers and Makers|___location=New York|publisher=Addison-Wesley|pages=253–277|year=2015|isbn=978-0-321-90604-5}}</ref> and [[open science]].
==Requirements==
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 [[standardization|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.
==Hardware systems==
Applications to date include:
*Robot arms, e.g. PARA<ref>{{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
}}</ref><ref>{{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
}}</ref> or Thor<ref>{{cite web
| title = The Thor open-source robotic arm
| url = http://thor.angel-lm.com/
| access-date = 2024-10-20
}}</ref>
* Wheeled mobile robots. e.g. OpenScout<ref>{{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
}}</ref>
*[[Legged robot#Four-legged|Four-legged robots]] such as the Open Dynamic Robot Initiative<ref>
{{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
}}
</ref>
* UAV quadcopters (drones) such as Agilicious<ref>{{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}}</ref>
* Humanoid robots, e.g. [[iCub]], Berkeley Humanoid Lite<ref>{{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 }}</ref>
* [[Self-driving car]]s, e.g. OpenPodcar<ref>{{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
}}</ref> (→ [[Personal rapid transit]])
* [[Robot fish]], eg. OpenFish<ref>{{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
}}</ref>
* [[Laboratory robotics#Applications|Laboratory robotics]] such as chemical liquid handling <ref>{{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
}}</ref>
* Vertical farming<ref>{{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
}}</ref>
* Swarm robots, e.g. HeRoSwarm<ref>{{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
}}</ref>
* Domestic tasks: [[Robotic vacuum cleaner#Open-source designs|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) [[Special:Diff/1283333601|has been deleted]].|diff_id=1283333601}}, [[Scooba (brand)|floor washing]]<ref>{{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}}</ref> and grass mowing<ref>{{cite web|url=https://github.com/ClemensElflein/OpenMower|title=Open Mower|website=[[GitHub]] |access-date=13 September 2024}}</ref>
* Robot sports including [[robot combat]]<ref>{{cite web|title=Open builds Battlebots|url=https://us.openbuilds.com/battlebots/}}</ref> and [[autonomous racing]]<ref>{{cite web|title=f1tenth|url=https://f1tenth.org/}}</ref>
* Education<ref>{{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 }}</ref>
==Hardware subcomponents==
{{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 hardware robotics interface boards<ref>{{cite journal
| last1 = Waltham | first1 = Chris
| last2 = Soni | first2 = Rakshit
| last3 = Perrett | first3 = Andy
| last4 = Fox | first4 = Charles
| year = 2025
| title = R4: rapid reproducible robotics research open hardware control system
| journal = Journal of Open Hardware
| volume = 9
| issue = 1
| arxiv = 2402.09833
}}</ref> can simplify interfacing between middleware software and physical hardware.
== Software subcomponents ==
{{See also|List of free and open-source software packages#Robotics|l1=List of open-source robotics software}}
=== Middleware ===
[[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 [[Robot Operating System|ROS2]], the robot operating system, now as version 2. Other alternatives include ROS1, YARP — used in the [[iCub]], [[URBI]], and [[Orca]]. Open source middleware is usually run on an open source operating system, especially the [[Ubuntu]] distribution of [[Linux]].
=== Driver software ===
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]].
=== Simulation software ===
Open source robotics simulators include [[Gazebo simulator|Gazebo]], [[MuJoCo]] and [[Webots]]. Open source 3D game engines such as [[Godot (game engine)|Godot]] are also sometimes used as simulators, when equipped with suitable middleware interfaces.<ref>{{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}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |title=ProviewR X Godot |url=https://www.nexedi.com/blog/P-OSIE-Blog.ProviewR.Godot |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240302131907/https://www.nexedi.com/blog/P-OSIE-Blog.ProviewR.Godot |archive-date=2 March 2024 |access-date=2025-03-09 |website=Nexedi |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{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 }}</ref><ref>{{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)}}</ref>
=== Automation software ===
At the level of [[AI]], many standard algorithms have open source software implementations, mostly in [[Robot Operating System|ROS2]]. Major components include:
* [[Machine vision]] systems such as the [[You Only Look Once|YOLO]] object detector.
* 3D [[photogrammetry]]<ref>{{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 }}</ref>
* Navigation including [[Simultaneous localization and mapping|SLAM]] and planning such as nav2<ref>{{cite web
| title = nav2
| url = https://docs.nav2.org//
| access-date = 2024-10-20
}}</ref>
* Arm inverse kinematics such as moveIt2<ref>{{cite web
| title = MoveIt 2
| url = https://moveit.picknik.ai/humble/index.html
| access-date = 2024-10-20
}}</ref>
==Community==
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 (robot)|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 [[Robot Operating System|ROS]] middleware and meets annually at the ROSCon<ref>{{cite web
| title = ROSCon
| url = https://roscon.ros.org/
| access-date = 2024-10-20
}}</ref> conference to discuss development of ROS itself and automation components built on it.
==References==
{{Reflist}}
{{Robotics}}
{{Open navbox}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Open-Source Robotics}}
[[Category:Open-source robots| ]]
[[Category:Robotics]]
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