Getting started

Marvin Bot is in phase 1: the robot exists only in simulation. Everything here runs on an ordinary computer; nothing needs hardware. Training the walking policies needs an NVIDIA GPU and Isaac Lab, but the checks below do not.

Not built or tested on hardware

The designs, policies and scripts have only run in simulation; the motor driver and bench scripts are untested. A robot of this size can cause serious injury, fire or damage if built or run wrongly. Read the safety notes before powering any part of it.

1. Get the code and run the checks

You need Git and Python 3.10 or later (continuous integration uses 3.12).

git clone https://github.com/kranthie/marvin-bot.git
cd marvin-bot
python3.12 -m venv .venv && . .venv/bin/activate
pip install -e ".[dev,cad,sim]"
tools/check_all.sh          # every check CI runs, in CI's order

check_all.sh lints the code, runs the unit tests, rebuilds the code-CAD and checks it against the committed files, sweeps every joint for collisions, checks the description, bill of materials, URDF and wiring harness, and stands the robot up in MuJoCo. The overview lists each check on its own.

2. Look at the robot

python -m cad.build                          # part meshes and masses (git-ignored outputs)
MUJOCO_GL=egl python tools/render_robot.py   # the MuJoCo render shown on the overview page

Or open the 3-D model in your browser: it is generated from the same files, and you can peel back the shells, follow the assembly order and play simple skills.

3. Find your way around

If you want to…	Read
understand the project in ten minutes	the overview
know what is planned and what is done	the plan and the roadmap
know why something is the way it is	the decision log, newest first
learn humanoid robotics from first principles	the interactive guide and the tutorials page
train or check the walking policies	walking and stairs in Isaac Lab
work on motion tracking	the motion tracking pipeline
price or buy parts	the bill of materials
contribute	contributing and the code of conduct

How the repository is organised

description/robot.yaml is the single source of truth for the joints, ranges, sizes, motors and CAN buses. The code-CAD in cad/ builds every part from it, tools/build_urdf.py generates the robot model (URDF) that the simulators use, and the checks keep everything consistent. The documentation index lists every document, with a short glossary.

Building this site

The site lives in site/ and is built with Astro Starlight. Its pages are copied from the repository’s Markdown at build time, so edit the Markdown files, not the site. site/README.md explains how to preview it locally.