🤖 Impulse - Open-Source Two-Wheeled Bipedal Robot

Developed from the scratch, this project explores a compact robotic platform that combines two-legged articulation with wheeled locomotion. The design prioritizes stability, responsive movement, adjustable height, and portability.

Features of the project:
➡️Self-balancing PID control
➡️Automatic deployment and landing
➡️Variable-height legs
➡️Fully 3D-printed construction

The project combines mechanical design with a compact electronics and control system built around a Teensy 4.1, ODrive motor controllers, magnetic encoders, an IMU, and CAN bus communication. Its 6-DOF structure and multiple PID controllers enable stable balancing, velocity control, and dynamic leg adjustment.

Impulse is particularly interesting for robotics enthusiasts and makers exploring balancing robots, actuator control, and practical control theory. Its detailed hardware and control approach also make it a useful reference for people building their own wheeled robots.

More information:
🔗 The main article
📥 Source files

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🤖 Open-Source Humanoid Breaks 400m Record

Robot “Tiangong” made headlines at the 2nd World Humanoid Robot Games in Beijing by completing the 400m race in 38.15 seconds, beating the previous human world record of 43.03 seconds. The robot is part of China’s state-backed X-Humanoid program and is built as a platform for advancing humanoid robotics, with its latest version featuring 43 degrees of freedom and high-dynamic movement control.

A notable part of Tiangong’s development is that some of its technology is open source. X-Humanoid has released components including 😹 locomotion-control software, robot models, training tools and large robotics datasets, allowing researchers and other developers to build on its technology.

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🚦 Open-Source UV Protection Amulet

The UV Protection Amulet is a hardware/firmware project built around a compact electronic pendant that detects and warns about ultraviolet radiation. The project combines custom PCB design, embedded electronics, and precision-machined metalwork in a highly compact device.

Features of the project:
➡️Ultraviolet radiation detection
➡️Custom PCB hardware design
➡️Precision-machined metal enclosure
➡️Open-source firmware and CAD

The project is a compelling example of small-scale hardware engineering, showing how electronics, mechanical fabrication, and embedded software can be integrated into a functional wearable device. It may be especially interesting to hardware makers, electronics enthusiasts, and engineers exploring compact custom devices.

More information:
🔗 The main article
😹 The GitHub repository
📺 The YouTube video

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🧠 Robots Get a Sense of Touch

Robots are getting better at complex tasks with vision-language-action (VLA) models, but they still struggle with precise manipulation such as inserting cables, turning keys, or handling deformable objects. Tactile sensing can provide information about force, grip, and slipping, but progress has been limited by the lack of large, diverse datasets. Recent research is addressing this gap by combining touch with vision and robot-action data.

Berkeley researchers created the T-Rex dataset with about 100 hours of tactile demonstrations involving more than 200 household objects. Another project aggregated over 3,000 hours of publicly available data covering 21 sensor types and different robot platforms. USC researchers also released a model that can infer tactile information from visual data, potentially helping researchers create more tactile training data from existing vision datasets.

Early results show that touch can significantly improve robot manipulation. In one study, tactile feedback produced a 65% average success rate across 12 tasks, nearly twice the performance of the best VLA baseline; another approach achieved 62.8% success compared with 28.2% without touch. The main challenges remain data diversity, sensor compatibility, and how robots process sparse tactile signals in real time.

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