Projects & News

Building Our Small Experimental Robot

Our goal was to create a simple, compact, and practical test robot, ideal for use in an office or lab environment. The design is intentionally minimalistic—using only a few components, a fully functional robot can be built quickly.

Required Components

For the basic setup, you only need:

owlStarter Kit
24 V battery
e.g. GFRP plates (approx. 20 × 30 cm, 3 mm thick)
freely rotating front wheel / caster
a few screws and cables
3D-printed wheels

Mechanical Assembly

The overall dimensions of the robot and the choice of materials can be adapted to your needs. The only important consideration is that the construction should not be too heavy for the drive motors. If necessary, more powerful motors can of course be used.

First, mount the brackets for the geared motors onto the base plate.
There are two common mounting options:

Rear-mounted motors (approx. 50 mm from the rear edge to the motor shaft center):
→ requires a freely rotating wheel or caster at the front.
Centrally mounted motors (e.g. for a round robot or symmetric driving in both directions):
→ requires two freely rotating casters, one at the front and one at the rear.

Next, drill a sufficiently large hole at a suitable position in the base plate to route the motor cables neatly.
Then print and mount the two wheels—this completes the basic mechanical assembly.

Electronics & Final Steps

Now mount the battery and electronics onto the base plate (using screws or double-sided tape) and connect the wiring.

At this point, the minimalist test robot is already operational.

In our setup, we additionally install a second cover plate, mounted with four threaded rods. This protects the electronics and provides mounting points for a camera and ultrasonic sensors.

Finally, install the software on the SD card, briefly configure the owlDrive motor drivers, and the test robot is ready to go.

Documentation & Support

We are currently preparing detailed documentation as well as step-by-step videos for this setup.
If you don’t want to wait, feel free to get started right away—and if you have any questions, just contact us via the contact form.

: Projects & News; 07 January 2026; Hits: 135

FollowMe Robot

How convenient would it be if a mobile robot followed you every step of the way—carrying groceries, tools, a crate of beer, or even pulling a wagon?
That’s exactly what will soon be possible with the owlRobotics Kit as the hardware platform and the owlFramework as the software platform.
We are currently extending the owlFramework with an easy-to-use interface that allows developers to control our hardware quickly and efficiently. Of course, this also requires a compelling example application—and this is exactly where FollowMe comes into play.
As shown in the video, our compact test robot follows our developer at a defined distance—even while moving in reverse. The person is reliably detected and tracked at all times.
If you expect expensive, specialized AI hardware, you are partly right:
We use the integrated AI capabilities of the CPU, specifically three AI cores that deliver impressive performance. Yes, it is specialized AI hardware—but at a price of under €100. Our application runs on an Orange Pi with 4 GB of RAM, making it powerful, compact, and highly cost-efficient.
And anyone familiar with owlRobotics knows: our hardware is scalable. It doesn’t just drive small test robots—it can also control powerful motors for payloads of several hundred kilograms.

Curious to learn more?

Whether it’s a FollowMe robot carrying beer on your next hike, or a helper that follows you with tools in the garden or the workshop—now is the perfect time to start your own project.

: Projects & News; 21 December 2025; Hits: 374

owlRobotics – Autonomous Robotics Powered by ROS

owlRobotics uses the Robot Operating System (ROS) to develop intelligent, autonomous robots.
In this video, we showcase our ROS development environment with integrated simulator, which allows us to write, test, and validate control software for autonomous mobile platforms.

Featured in this demonstration of our robot control software:

LiDAR Auto-Mapping using the Livox MID-360
Fully Dynamic Realtime Coverage Planning
Realtime Obstacle Avoidance
LiDAR-based Autonomous Docking
Live Pixel Maps indicating No-Go Zones, Obstacles, and Stuck Events
Realtime Customizable Multi-Zone Support
Robot Stuck Detection and Recovery
owlRobotics Hardware: CAN-based owlDrive motor controllers and central owlController running on Raspberry Pi 5 or Orange Pi 5 Pro

: Projects & News; 28 June 2025; Hits: 3739

New owlDrive, slim version but full power

What's new in 2025 at owlRobotics?
We have further improved our owlRobotics kit, consisting of the owlController and owlDrive, so that our customers have all the possibilities to bring their robot ideas to life or tackle the upcycling of high-quality but defective and loop-bound robotic lawnmowers.

A major new feature is the significantly smaller motor driver, which, despite its compact size, can still control motors up to 180W, making it suitable for many applications.

But while the hardware has shrunk, the software has grown. With the latest owlDrive software, the motor driver can now control not only 3-phase brushless motors but also single-phase brushless motors and even DC/brushed motors, as well as all controllable DC loads. And the best part? All previously used owlDrive units can gain these new functions through a simple software update.

This makes it possible to implement a wide range of applications with this system.

If you're interested in using our technology in your project, feel free to reach out via the contact page!

: Projects & News; 12 February 2025; Hits: 5220

Lawn detection with a stereo camera

Recognizing the lawn is still a challenge for a robot that requires a human. But thanks to the ever-improving algorithms, we can use an inexpensive stereo camera to detect the working area of the robotic lawnmower. This technology will be further expanded so that other work surfaces can also be recognized.

: Projects & News; 13 August 2024; Hits: 7126