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Berkeley Humanoid Lite Arm (BHL v1.5)

A 3D printed bimanual arm robot platform built on Robstride actuators with LeRobot-compatible control and teleoperation.

  • Robot arm
  • Open source
  • Work in progress
  • Works with AI
  • LeRobot
  • 3D model (URDF)
  • 3D printable

Suggested by Robotheca, created by @berkeley-humanoids (opens in a new tab), from github.com/berkeley-humanoids/berkeley-humanoid-lite-arm (opens in a new tab). Pinned to commit e6940b4 (opens in a new tab).

Fork on GitHub (opens in a new tab)Download the files at this commit (.zip)
Hardware license
MIT (opens in a new tab)
Software license
MIT (opens in a new tab)
Commercial use
Allowed

This repository contains executable files that Robotheca doesn't check. Only run them if you trust the creator.

Which files (1 script)

Photo and 3D model

This repository has no photo of the robot yet.
Try it in the browser

3D preview converted from github.com/berkeley-humanoids/berkeley-humanoid-lite-arm at e6940b4, under MIT. View the original files from GitHub (10.7 MB) (opens in a new tab)

What it can do

Written by Robotheca from the project's documents.

  • Bimanual arm platform with a left and a right arm, each driven by actuators on CAN buses.
  • Joint-level control with stiffness and damping gains, plus a soft-start that ramps gains while holding pose.
  • Keyboard teleoperation of left and right wrist yaw joints for sanity checking.
  • Cartesian end-effector teleoperation via keyboard, SteamVR controller, or dual 3Dconnexion SpaceMouse, solved with MuJoCo and Mink inverse kinematics.
  • Joint calibration that records joint range extremes and computes per-joint homing offsets.
  • Exposed as LeRobot-compatible robot and teleoperator plugins.

Works with AI

Found by Robotheca in the project's files at commit e6940b4, its robot.yaml and Robotheca's notes on its documents. Never guessed; Robotheca doesn't run the code.

Bill of materials

This repository has no parts list Robotheca can read yet.

Build guide

The guide appears here as you scroll.

Guide by @berkeley-humanoids (README.md), under MIT.

Wiring and electronics

Notes written by Robotheca from the project's documents.

Main parts

  • Robstride actuators, one per joint, communicating over CAN.
  • Two CAN interfaces: can0 for the left arm and can1 for the right arm.
  • Host computer running Python 3.11 that drives the CAN buses.
  • Optional 3Dconnexion SpaceMouse Compact devices on USB HID (hidraw) for teleoperation.
  • Optional SteamVR controllers sending pose data over UDP.

Connections

  • Left arm actuators are reached on the can0 bus and right arm actuators on the can1 bus.
  • The default CAN mapping is left arm to can0 and right arm to can1, brought up with the canup.sh script.
  • Each SpaceMouse connects to the host over USB and appears as a hidraw device such as /dev/hidraw1 or /dev/hidraw2.