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What is selfrisingrobot?

homemadegarbage/selfrisingrobot — explained in plain English

Analysis updated 2026-05-18

38CAudience · researcherComplexity · 4/5Setup · hard

In one sentence

SelfRisingRobot is a two-servo robot that learns to stand itself up using reinforcement learning in a physics simulator, then runs that trained behavior on real M5Atom microcontroller hardware.

Mindmap

mindmap
  root((SelfRisingRobot))
    What it does
      Self righting robot
      Two servo arm
      RL trained motion
    Tech stack
      C
      Arduino
      MuJoCo
      Stable-Baselines3
    Use cases
      3D print robot body
      Train RL policy
      Deploy to microcontroller
    Audience
      Robotics hobbyists
      RL researchers
      Makers

Code map

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What do people build with it?

USE CASE 1

3D print the included STL files to build the physical self-righting robot body.

USE CASE 2

Train a reinforcement learning policy for a self-righting motion using MuJoCo and PPO.

USE CASE 3

Export a trained policy to a C header file and run it on an M5Atom microcontroller.

What is it built with?

CArduinoMuJoCoPythonStable-Baselines3

How does it compare?

homemadegarbage/selfrisingrobotjakobfriedl/usb-monitor-bofunclecheng-li/poc-lab
Stars383937
LanguageCCC
Setup difficultyhardhardhard
Complexity4/54/54/5
Audienceresearcherdeveloperresearcher

Figures from each repo's GitHub metadata at analysis time.

How do you get it running?

Difficulty · hard Time to first run · 1day+

Requires a 3D printer, a MuJoCo and Python RL setup, and an M5Atom board to reproduce the full pipeline.

No license file is included, so terms of use are unclear.

So what is it?

SelfRisingRobot is a small robotics project that teaches a two-servo physical robot named "poco" to stand itself up from a lying position. The robot never learns this skill on the real hardware directly. Instead, the motion is trained entirely inside a physics simulator, and the resulting behavior is then transferred to the actual robot. The simulation side uses MuJoCo, a physics engine that models how physical objects move and interact. The learning algorithm is PPO (Proximal Policy Optimization), a reinforcement learning technique where the robot is rewarded for successfully rising and penalized when it fails. Training runs many thousands of attempts inside the simulator until the robot figures out the correct sequence of joint movements. Stable-Baselines3, a Python library for reinforcement learning, handles the training loop. Once training is complete, the learned policy gets exported as a plain C header file called policy_network.h. This file contains the neural network weights in a format that can run directly on the M5Atom, a tiny microcontroller roughly the size of a thumb. The Arduino sketch on the M5Atom reads that header file and drives the two servos based on what the trained network tells them to do. The physical robot body is printed on a 3D printer. The repository includes four STL model files covering the foot, two arm segments, and an arm horn. Full build details and a walkthrough of the whole process are documented in a separate blog post linked in the README. The repository is organized into three folders: 3Dmodel for the printable parts, RL for the simulation and training code, and Arduino for the embedded firmware that runs on the finished robot.

Copy-paste prompts

Prompt 1
Explain how policy_network.h in SelfRisingRobot turns a trained PPO policy into C code an M5Atom can run.
Prompt 2
Help me build a MuJoCo simulation and PPO training setup similar to SelfRisingRobot's RL folder.
Prompt 3
Walk me through 3D printing and assembling the SelfRisingRobot body from its STL files.
Prompt 4
Show me how to flash the robo03.ino Arduino sketch onto an M5Atom board.

Frequently asked questions

What is selfrisingrobot?

SelfRisingRobot is a two-servo robot that learns to stand itself up using reinforcement learning in a physics simulator, then runs that trained behavior on real M5Atom microcontroller hardware.

What language is selfrisingrobot written in?

Mainly C. The stack also includes C, Arduino, MuJoCo.

What license does selfrisingrobot use?

No license file is included, so terms of use are unclear.

How hard is selfrisingrobot to set up?

Setup difficulty is rated hard, with roughly 1day+ to a first successful run.

Who is selfrisingrobot for?

Mainly researcher.

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