An experimental project to build the cheapest possible state of the art AI robot platform. The idea: an AI robot that grows up differently based on its own experiences of the world.
The brain is any smartphone. The body is a Pico, two servos, and a battery. About $30, 30 minutes, no soldering. It senses through the phone, stores its experiences in a soul file, and dreams to self improve.
Top down home robots are the scary version: corporate machines nobody outside can inspect. Bottom up is safer: millions of small robots you fully control. Open it, read it, retrain it, use any model you want.
| BUILD.md | The build: 2 servos + Pico + phone |
| BOM.md | Parts list with sourcing links |
| hardware/ | Body STLs, plus a paper cutout template if you have no printer |
| firmware/ | Pico firmware, drag and drop |
| protocol/ | The open body protocol + conformance test |
| agent-harness/ | Run your own LLM on your robot, no account |
| PORTING.md | Plug the GrowBot brain into your own robot |
| policy/ | The trained walk policy: runner, weights, contract |
| ports/ | Community ports. First up: a robot lawnmower |
Build guide with pictures: growbot.dev/build
- Free. Build the body, run agent-harness/ on your own key or a local model.
- Adopt him, $20. The hosted brain at growbot.dev/start. No keys, no setup.
The hosted creature costs me real money to run. That is what the $20 covers.
The protocol is open on purpose: any board that speaks it is a GrowBot body. Port it, prove it with the conformance test, open a PR. Small PRs please: CONTRIBUTING.md.
V0 learned to walk from scratch on a Pi, wired sensor by sensor over a year. Preserved at the v0 tag. V1 moves the brain to the phone: more powerful, way cheaper.
- Code: PolyForm Noncommercial 1.0.0. Use, change, share, noncommercial. Commercial: info@growbot.dev
- Hardware and docs: CC BY-NC 4.0, credit Art of the Problem.
Made by Art of the Problem.