// the find
dorianborian/sesame-robot
An open and affordable mini quadruped robot based on ESP32.
Sesame is a sub-$60 quadruped robot built around an ESP32, fully 3D-printable in PLA with 8 MG90 servos. It comes with firmware, a custom PCB distribution board, an animation composer desktop app, a Rust-based 3D simulator, and a Python companion app for voice control. Aimed at makers who want a walking robot platform without Spot-level budget.
The ecosystem around the hardware is unusually complete for a hobby project — Gerbers and BOM are versioned (v1/v2/v3 distro boards), Fusion 360 + STEP files are included so you can actually modify the CAD, and the Rust simulator lets you test kinematics without destroying servos. The JSON REST API over WiFi is a clean integration point; you can drive it from Python or anything else without touching the firmware. At $50–60 in parts it sits in a price class where the alternatives are either much simpler (2-DOF arm kits) or much more expensive. The OLED face library with per-animation expression sync is a small touch that makes demos look genuinely good.
Only 2 DOF per leg means the gait options are limited — no hip abduction, so turning and lateral stability are inherently awkward compared to 12-DOF designs. The firmware is Arduino C++ and the README calls it 'a basic implementation', which isn't false; there's no IMU feedback, no closed-loop gait correction, and no inverse kinematics — servo angles are hand-tuned keyframes all the way down. The Sesame Studio animation tool generates hardcoded C++ arrays you paste into the firmware, which gets painful fast as your animation library grows. Battery life data is completely absent from the docs, which matters when you're deciding between the USB-C PD path and the Bambu Lab Li-ion option.