dorianborian/sesame-robot

What it solves

Sesame is an accessible, open-source quadruped robot designed to lower the barrier for makers and engineers to experiment with robotics, movement, and emotive expression. It provides a complete package of hardware designs, firmware, and software tools to build a walking robot without needing professional-grade engineering resources.

How it works

The robot is built using an ESP32 microcontroller and eight servo motors (two per leg) to achieve eight degrees of freedom. It features an OLED screen for a reactive face and connects to WiFi for remote control. The system is supported by a suite of tools:

• Firmware: Manages kinematics, the face display, and a web-based control interface.
• Sesame Studio: A desktop application for visually posing the robot and generating C++ code for animations.
• Sesame Simulator: A Rust-based 3D physics environment for testing movements virtually.
• Companion App: A Python application that enables voice assistant integration and remote network control via a JSON API.
• ML Tools: A separate set of tools for world modeling, policy evaluation, and reinforcement learning fine-tuning.

Who it’s for

Makers, hobbyists, and engineers of all skill levels who have access to a 3D printer and basic soldering skills.

Highlights

• Fully 3D Printable: Designed for PLA with minimal supports.
• Emotive Interface: A 128x64 OLED screen that syncs facial expressions with movement.
• Programmatic Control: Includes a RESTful JSON API for integration with Python or JavaScript.
• Comprehensive Toolchain: Includes a visual animation composer, a physics simulator, and ML tools for advanced planning and RL.