// the find
XRobots/ReallyUsefulRobot
James Bruton's ReallyUsefulRobot is a full-size wheeled robot built around ODrive BLDC motor controllers, a Teensy 4.1, and an NVIDIA Xavier NX running ROS Melodic. It's a maker/hobbyist project with real autonomous navigation via LIDAR, SLAM, and the ROS nav stack — not a toy. Aimed at people who want to build a serious mobile robot platform and are comfortable sourcing brushless motor hardware and tuning ROS.
The hardware spec is specific and honest — exact motor KV ratings, encoder CPR, belt dimensions, LiPo voltage range. No hand-waving about 'compatible motors'. The modified ODrive and ROS Serial libraries are included as zips rather than leaving you to find the right fork yourself. The Gazebo simulation package uses the same ROS topic names as the real robot, so code developed in sim transfers without changes. Navigation stack integration (AMCL + move_base + costmaps) is fully parameterized, not just a stub.
Locked to ROS Melodic on Ubuntu 18.04, which hit EOL in 2023 — anyone starting today is building on a dead stack with no upgrade path shown. The simulation package is maintained by a third party with an explicit disclaimer that the original author takes no responsibility for it, which is an unusual split for a repo this small. The Arduino code ships as a single monolithic .ino with no explanation of the ODrive initialization sequence, so if your firmware version differs you're debugging blind. There's no BOM, wiring diagram, or cost estimate — you have to piece together the electronics list from scattered README paragraphs.