> [HTML view](https://gyropup.com/site/pages/readme-md.html) · [Markdown index](https://gyropup.com/llms.txt). Generated from the same published content. Interactive controls and 3D scenes are available in the HTML view.
[← Design notebook](https://gyropup.com/site/)
BUILT BY AUTONOMOUS SYSTEMS · WORK IN PROGRESS
# Gyropup
A friendly self-balancing wheel-legged robot that plays foam-ball target games with kids.
Gyropup balances on two hub-motor wheels and crouches, stands and jumps on two five-bar legs, each driven by two RobStride RS-04 actuators inside the body. A pan/tilt turret on top fires Rival-size foam balls at knock-down targets (always low, never above horizontal). Every custom part is 3D printed: structure in PA6-CF on a hardened nozzle, the rest in PETG and TPU. Bought parts are bearings, pins, screws and inserts from McMaster-Carr, the motors and the electronics.
**One design, built in this order** (decisions D36-D38 in [docs/decisions.yaml](https://gyropup.com/docs/decisions.yaml)):
1. **One leg** on a vertical-rail test rig: a five-bar with both motors in its hip frame. CAD in [`cad/fivebar.py`](https://gyropup.com/cad/fivebar.py), physics in [`sim/leg_rig.py`](https://gyropup.com/sim/leg_rig.py).
2. **The turret** on its own bench base ([`cad/turret.py`](https://gyropup.com/cad/turret.py)).
3. **The body** around two legs: the Orin compute, the battery and the electronics inside one printed shell, the lights on the hips beside the turret, the eyes on the face.
**Status:** leg v2 is in CAD and simulation; nothing is built yet. The old serial-leg robot (`cad/build.py`, `cad/leg.py`, `sim/model.py`, the 3D game page) stays only until leg v2 is on the full robot.
**Website & playground:** [gyropup.com](https://gyropup.com/). The same landing page, simulator and engineering portal run locally: `nvm use && npm ci && npm run dev`. Reviewed changes on `main` publish automatically through Cloudflare Pages. [Development, deployment and browser checks](https://gyropup.com/site/pages/docs-site-deployment-md.html).
**CAD dashboard:** `.venv/bin/cad-agent site --serve --port 8642` remains available for the original local CAD workflow.
| Folder | What is in it |
| --- | --- |
| [`cad/`](https://gyropup.com/cad/) | The parts in CadQuery: the leg (`fivebar.py`, `build_leg.py`), the turret (`turret.py`), the interface standard (`gmi.py`, `interfaces.json`) |
| [`sim/`](https://gyropup.com/sim/) | MuJoCo: the single-leg rig (`leg_rig.py`); the old robot's balance controller and scenarios |
| [`docs/`](https://gyropup.com/docs/) | [Requirements](https://gyropup.com/site/pages/docs-requirements-md.html), [decisions](https://gyropup.com/docs/decisions.yaml), [milestones](https://gyropup.com/docs/milestones.yaml), the [interface standard](https://gyropup.com/site/pages/docs-mechanical-interfaces-md.html) |
| [`research/`](https://gyropup.com/research/) | Sourced research: comparable robots, actuators, wheels, power, sensors, the turret |
| [`catalog/`](https://gyropup.com/catalog/) | The parts this robot uses, with specs, prices and sources ([format](https://gyropup.com/site/pages/catalog-schema-md.html)); McMaster hardware in `hardware.json` |
| [`designer/`](https://gyropup.com/designer/) | The progress page and the 3D game page (Gyropup's voice and turret; the turret on the Orin AGX box, fired by hand, its mechanism laid open) |
| [`tools/`](https://github.com/Valpatel/gyropup/blob/main/tools/) | The leg's geometry sweep, McMaster CAD downloads, the voice server |
The tooling that compared many designs and parts lives on in [cad-agent](https://github.com/Valpatel/cad-agent) as a generic comparison framework; the version that was here is at the git tag `explorer-snapshot-2026-10-26`.
**Licence:** [MIT](https://github.com/Valpatel/gyropup/blob/main/LICENSE), covering the code, CAD sources, generated models, docs and data in this repository. Bought parts' vendor CAD (STEP files from McMaster-Carr, RobStride, Seeed and others) is not in the repository and is not covered: `references/vendor/**/SOURCE.txt` records where each came from, and the build fetches them locally. Product names and trademarks belong to their owners.
Created by [Valpatel Software LLC](https://valpatel.com/). © 2026. All rights reserved. Repository materials retain their stated licenses.