Palm‑sized. Omnidirectional. AI‑powered. Yours to build.

Four vibrating legs, a camera eye, a brain you can hack. Open firmware, modular by design — small enough for your desk, or every desk in a classroom.

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Built in the open — follow on Instagram · code on GitHub.

What it does

A real robot. Real AI. In your hand.

Three things make the BugBot different — and you can see all three.

Built for

Makers, students, and the classrooms that need both

One robot, two audiences — and a real reason for each.

For makers

A real AI robot, on your desk

Not a sealed plastic toy. Not a Lego set. A genuine robot you wire, code and modify — with AI vision on a board you can hold.

  • Open firmware, fully documented hardware — program it, mod it, extend it
  • Modular connectors for sensors, cameras and add-ons
  • Real engineering — wire it, solder it, code it, and make it yours
  • Cheap enough to break, real enough to build something serious
  • Upload your own TinyML models — real machine learning, no cloud round-trip
For schools

One robot per student, not one per team

Bulky kits force teams of four to six around a single robot. With BugBot's palm size and price, every student gets hands-on time — not 20 minutes of waiting between five-minute turns.

  • Fits on the desks you already have — no robotics lab required
  • Maps cleanly to KS4 and beyond — computing & D&T, electronics, programming, AI/computer vision
  • Safe by design — low-power vibration, no spinning wheels
  • A classroom set at a fraction of LEGO / VEX pricing
  • Lesson plans and teaching materials included with classroom kits
  • Real, hands-on engineering — the skills transfer
The BugBot Board — a compact robotics control board
In development

The BugBot Board

A compact ESP32-S3 controller designed from scratch for the BugBot — and for whatever else you can imagine. Open code. Hackable platform. Every pin and port is fully documented — build with it, code it, extend it freely.

One board, many robots. All you really need is the BugBot Board. Pair it with motors, sensors and a 3D-printed chassis, and you have the foundation for any small robot you can imagine.

  • Open source firmwareArduino, MicroPython or your own — TensorFlow Lite / TinyML supported. Full repo on GitHub.
  • Fully documentedPinout maps, electrical specs and API reference — all public.
  • Modular by designPlug-in connectors for motors, servos, the camera, ToF depth sensor and IMU.

Specifications

What's inside

The hardware on the BugBot Board, in one place.

MicrocontrollerESP32-S3 (dual-core, 240 MHz, Wi-Fi + Bluetooth)
On-device AITensorFlow Lite for Microcontrollers — upload and run your own TinyML models
Drive4 × vibration motors — omnidirectional motion in a palm-sized chassis
Motor outputs4 × DC motor channels (TB6612FNG drivers) + 4 × servo headers
VisionOnboard camera + 8×8 Time-of-Flight depth sensor (64-zone ranging)
SensingBosch BNO055 9-axis IMU · microphone connector · I²C sensor port
StorageMicroSD card slot — code, data logging and ML model storage
ConnectivityWi-Fi · Bluetooth · USB-C
PowerUSB-C charging + onboard battery management (Li-ion / LiPo)
Dimensions~70 × 70 × 70 mm — palm-sized
ProgrammingScratch · Arduino · MicroPython · ESP-IDF
LicenceOpen firmware · documented hardware platform — firmware sources on GitHub

The Story

How BugBot started.

I designed the first BugBot during my engineering PhD, running the university's robotics society.

Every year, dozens of new members joined — and watched. The big competition robots were too expensive, too dangerous, too few. The experienced few drove. The rest stood around.

Then I read a paper on vibration-driven swarm robots.

What if every member had their own?

I designed an inexpensive kit. An afternoon to assemble. Small enough for a desk. Complex enough to teach the real concepts. Now everyone was building, testing and taking part.

That's BugBotLab. Real robotics — learning and competition — on a desk. Every student builds. Not watches.

It's still just me. Designed, built, coded, filmed. Every prototype and every failure on Instagram. The waitlist is your front-row seat to what comes next.

— Jerome

FAQ

Common questions

The BugBot is in final development — final hardware iterations and firmware polish are happening now. The BugBot Board launches first, with complete kits to follow later. The exact launch date will be announced to waitlist subscribers first.

At launch, the BugBot Board is sold on its own — the brain of the system. Everything else (3D-printable chassis, motor list, sensor BOM, full build guide) will be free and open on GitHub. You source the additional parts and print the chassis yourself. Complete plug-and-go kits will follow later — for now it's the maker route.

Pricing is being finalised. The BugBot Board is designed to be affordable enough that an individual maker can pick one up easily — and that classrooms can buy them in volume — at a fraction of the cost of competing robotics platforms. Waitlist subscribers get the launch announcement first.

Correct — no wheels. Each of the four feet sits on a vibration motor with an offset weight inside. When the motor spins, that weight throws the leg in tiny rapid kicks. Drive the four motors at different speeds and the BugBot scurries forward, turns, or strafes in any direction. Same physics as the haptic buzz in your phone, scaled up to walk.

Anywhere reasonably flat — wood, plastic, hard floors, desks, paper. The feet are designed to grip without marking, so it shouldn't scuff a desk. Very glossy surfaces can get slippery (it loses traction); deep carpet won't catch. If in doubt, stick it on a piece of card — that always works.

Close — it's an 8×8 Time-of-Flight sensor, same family as lidar but much smaller. It pulses infrared light and times the bounce-back across 64 zones, giving the BugBot a low-resolution depth map of what's in front of it. Combined with the camera, that's genuine spatial awareness — measure distance, spot objects, dodge obstacles.

Some basic soldering will be needed at the board-first launch, since you'll be assembling parts you source yourself. Future complete kits will be plug-and-screw. You'll also need access to a 3D printer (or a print service) for the chassis. For code, the visual Scratch editor lets complete beginners write behaviours right away — and Arduino, MicroPython and on-device TinyML are there when you want to go deeper.

The firmware is fully open on GitHub — read it, fork it, modify it. The hardware platform is fully documented: every pin, port and interface, so you can extend it freely with any sensor, motor or module you can think of. The PCB design files themselves remain proprietary — that's how the BugBot stays affordable instead of racing knock-offs to the bottom.

Yes — you can order multiple BugBot Boards at launch, and the open files mean you can print and assemble chassis pieces in bulk. Full classroom kits will follow when production scales — pre-printed, pre-assembled, and with lesson plans and teaching materials included — designed so a teacher can have a robot for every student. Drop a note to info@bugbotlab.com with your group size and timeline.

Be first to get the BugBot

Join the waitlist for launch news, first access at launch, and behind-the-scenes build updates.

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See progress and robot demos on Instagram.