ArmBot
Build log — updated as milestones happen

A robot,
built in the open.

ArmBot is a mobile humanoid built by grafting an open-source head and arms onto a custom four-wheel base, split across three boards that each own one job: moving, seeing, and talking. Every capability on this page shipped, was reviewed, and was dated — this is the record of that, from the first commit forward.

Build Record — Live
—
Days in build
—
Boards on the bus
—
Milestones logged
—
Commits shipped
01 Vision

Mobile first.
Hands, next.

The build is deliberately staged in two phases — a robot that can move, perceive, and hold a conversation on its own comes first, because it produces exactly the 3D perception a grasping arm will depend on later.

Phase 01

Mobile perception platform

Head, torso, and a four-wheel omni base. Path planning, obstacle avoidance, person recognition and following, natural voice interaction — all running today.

In progress
Phase 02

Manipulation

The arms and hands are already built — shoulder to fingertip, both sides. What's ahead is teaching them to grasp and handle objects autonomously, on the 3D spatial detection Phase 1 already produces.

Hardware ready
02 Architecture

Open source underneath.
Rebuilt on top.

The head, arms, and hands started from pib.rocks, an open-source humanoid platform — used as a starting point, not a finished product. Everything below the neck is custom, and so is nearly the entire software stack.

Foundation
pib.rocks
open source

pib's own reference design is a stationary desk humanoid — it doesn't move. The four-wheel omni base underneath ArmBot replaces that mount entirely, and two whole boards in the compute layer below (Jetson, NUC) don't exist in the stock pib design at all. Navigation, perception, the voice pipeline, the reasoning "brain," every safety interlock, and this dashboard were all built from scratch on top of pib's head, arms, and hands.

Compute — three boards, one robot
Head

Raspberry Pi

  • Face & display
  • Head servos, gaze tracking
  • Mic array, wake word
  • Conversational front-end
AI

Jetson Orin

  • Camera perception, face ID
  • SLAM + Nav2 navigation
  • Speech recognition & synthesis (GPU)
  • Web dashboard
Core

Intel NUC

  • Real-time motion control
  • Four-wheel omni drive
  • IMU / GPS
  • The "brain" — reasoning & tools
shared network bus — one ROS domain, three boards
Power, drivetrain & actuation
Power

Battery & Distribution

  • LiFePO4 bank, 60A BMS
  • 48V busbars, 500W inverter
  • Fused + isolator switch
Drivetrain

Four-Wheel Omni Base

  • ESP32 motor controller
  • Dual MDD10A drivers
  • Encoder feedback per wheel
Sensing

Perception Inputs

  • 2D LiDAR, OAK-D depth camera
  • IMU + GPS
  • Gamepad override (safety)
Manipulation

Arms & Hands

  • Shoulder / elbow / wrist, both sides
  • 5 driven digits per hand, incl. thumb opposition
  • Hardware complete — autonomy is Phase 2
03 Timeline

Newest first.

Every entry below is a real, dated milestone from the project's own build record. New entries get added to the top as they happen — this list only grows.

04 What's Next

Teaching the hands
to work on their own.

Phase 2 — Manipulation

The arms and hands are already physical — pib-origin hardware, shoulder to fingertip, both sides, driven and positionable today. Phase 1 was built to produce the exact 3D spatial perception that hardware will need: object grasping, handoff, and physical task work, running autonomously on top of a platform that already navigates, recognizes people, and holds a conversation on its own.

05 Contact

Follow the build.

This page updates as new milestones ship — check back, or reach out directly if you'd like a closer look at the robot, the code, or what's planned next.

Get in touch Back to top ↑