Weekly Robotics #381

Nov 19, The Foundry, San Francisco

FUSE is the location technology conference for robotics and autonomy engineers. Learn from leaders deploying Physical AI in production at scale. Register with code FUSEWEEKLYROBOTICS for 30% off the ticket price!

Roboto 01 is an open-source humanoid robot from RoboParty. The humanoid is 1.35m tall and has 24 or 30 degrees of freedom total, depending on the version. This repository is an entry point to the project. There, you will find links to subsequent repos with BOM, CAD files, wiring, etc. I'm looking forward to hearing about someone making one of these.

Physical Intelligence has released what they call an API, where you send Pi your robot data, and they fine-tune it and adapt a Pi model to run it. On the website, you will find many interesting use cases from various companies. In a demo with an autonomous loader, I couldn't help but notice the loader hitting the truck repeatedly with both wheels and the scoop; it made me a bit uneasy about the application.

This paper comes from a lab that won the Abu Dhabi Autonomous Drone Racing Competition in 2025 and uses only a monocular rolling-shutter camera and an IMU. The key design choice is to run guidance and control on a neural network (3 x 64 neurons) at 500 Hz on a 32-bit flight controller and send commands directly to the motors.

This is one of the higher-quality open-source projects I've seen in a long while. It's a micro-manipulator motion control platform that achieves submicron precision. It's a closed-loop kinematic chain designed for optical alignment, probing electronic components, and microscopy. I wish I had a use case for this, as it would make a very satisfying build.

I'm very excited about this open-source 3D modeling software. The UI looks very similar to Autodesk's, and it can run in the browser. Yes, it's quite likely vibe-coded, so we will need to see how it's maintained over time, but so far I like what I'm seeing.

This video offers a behind-the-scenes look at how Boston Dynamics builds Atlas with its prototype operations team. All built in-house.

Tom Scott visits Wilkin & Sons, a UK jam-making company. I found this coverage of a state-of-the-art strawberry farm eye-opening; I had no idea these systems were so clever. As for strawberry-picking robots, they identify a ripe fruit, its position, and the stem attached to it.

Visiting Shenzhen is definitely on my bucket list. Watching Dorian Todd coverage from the visit reinforced that dream. During his trip, Dorian planned to build a robot, sourcing components from the Huaqiangbei market, which seems to have every electronic component ever made.