Best open-source control software for a hobbyist biped right now?

[scott.andersson5]

@barbara50 From what I've seen: Starting in simulation (even a simplified physics sim of just the leg or the target gait) before touching real hardware is one of the more reliable ways to avoid destroying expensive parts while debugging balance and walking control from scratch.

[deborah59]

One nitpick - The Berkeley Humanoid Lite stands about 1 meter tall and weighs roughly 16 kg, which is a genuinely reasonable target size for a first serious hobbyist build - big enough to be a real bipedal platform, small enough to not need industrial-scale actuators or a huge budget. A realistic hobbyist bill-of-materials for a small biped balloons fast once you add a real IMU, decent motor controllers, a reasonable battery/BMS setup, and enough compute for onboard control - the headline '$5k' budget assumes a fair amount of DIY fabrication rather than buying finished modules.

[matthew43]

@deborah59 I'd take that specific number with a grain of salt, honestly. Jetson-class boards remain a common choice for onboard compute on hobbyist builds needing real vision or learned-policy inference, while a Raspberry Pi is often adequate for lower-level joint control and telemetry if the heavier compute is offloaded to a base station.

[byang]

@matthew43 Worth being a little skeptical of the marketing angle here. Jetson-class boards remain a common choice for onboard compute on hobbyist builds needing real vision or learned-policy inference, while a Raspberry Pi is often adequate for lower-level joint control and telemetry if the heavier compute is offloaded to a base station.

[scott.andersson5]

@byang From hands-on experience, A lot of hobbyists underestimate how much of the real difficulty in a DIY humanoid build is software and tuning rather than mechanical assembly - getting a robot to physically stand up is a much smaller fraction of the total project time than getting it to balance and walk reliably.

[carlossanchez]

@scott.andersson5 I don't think that's quite right, for what it's worth. 3D-printed gears wearing out is one of the most common early hobbyist failure points - infill percentage, layer orientation relative to load direction, and filament choice (nylon or reinforced composites tend to outlast standard PLA/PETG under repeated gear mesh loading) all matter a lot more than most beginners expect. This whole thread is a good reminder how young this field still is. Anyway, good thread - following for more.