Everyone Can Build an Open-Source Robot

Talk overview

We still don’t know what the most successful robots of the future will look like — a humanoid, a robotic arm, a mobile manipulator, or perhaps something we haven’t imagined yet. As robots enter our homes, factories, and everyday spaces, being open, controllable, modifiable, and free from lock-in becomes increasingly important. At Seeed Studio, our mission has always been to make technology accessible. Today, we work closely with ecosystems such as NVIDIA and Hugging Face to lower the barriers to building robots — connecting open-source hardware with LeRobot, VLA models, NVIDIA Isaac Sim, and other emerging technologies in Physical AI. For the past 18 years, Seeed has been helping millions of developers turn ideas into real hardware. Based in Shenzhen, we connect global innovation with a highly responsive engineering and supply-chain ecosystem, helping developers move from idea to prototype, and from prototype to scalable manufacturing. Through Seeed’s open-source robotics journey and our reBot robotic arm, this talk explores how open-source communities, AI, open hardware, and agile manufacturing can come together to lower the barriers to robotics — enabling a future where everyone can build an open-source robot.