MOSS

Cleaner streets, one maker at a time.

MOSS is a small litter-picking rover you can print and build yourself: a tracked base, a bin, and an arm derived from the SO-101 with a parallel gripper. About $1,700 in parts as built, with a Jetson and a RealSense; a Raspberry Pi version around $820 is the next experiment. It is being built in public, from a living room in Hua Hin, Thailand. Nothing here is finished; everything here is real.

Where it stands

We forgot to take the wide shot, so this is 41 frames of a phone pan stitched together. It wobbles a bit; the parts are real.

All 113 printed parts are on the bench, with the shafts, bearings and screws to go with them. On 20 September the two drive motors ran for the first time, encoders counting, from the ESP32 that will drive them on the rover. By the evening the electronics were inside the chassis and the Jetson was booting from the battery. Some parts ended up elsewhere than the CAD planned; that is what a first prototype is for. It does not roll yet. Next is making it drive.

Every step is written down when it is real, good or bad. The build log has the dates and the numbers, the assembly feedback has what did not fit, the roadmap has what comes next, without dates.

What does it cost?

Build	Parts estimate
As built: Jetson Orin Nano Super, RealSense D455, 2 TB SSD	about $1,680
Next experiment: Raspberry Pi 5, Mighty Camera	$820
Next experiment: Raspberry Pi 5, ST 3D time-of-flight	$821

Replacement-cost estimates for every part, not receipts. The Pi builds keep the same chassis, arm and drivetrain, and have not been tested yet. Every line, assumption and source is in the itemized budget; the 45-second comparison tells it in pictures.

Try the demo

Jev, TypeSafe AI's decision model, choosing every step of a pickup (approach, align, grasp, lift, carry, release) on physics recorded once in MuJoCo, replayed in 3D in your browser. Three missions with real Jev decisions, plus the earlier target-choice scenarios: https://www.showrobotics.ai/moss-jev/

What is in here

• docs/ what MOSS is for, the build log, the bill of materials, the printed-parts list, the data rules, the roadmap.
• firmware/ the ESP32-S3 code that drives the motors, with its test.
• moss_dimos/ the Jetson side, on dimOS. Cold-tested only, for now.
• hardware/ the design files, published part by part as they prove themselves on the real robot, and the raw bench traces.
• media/ the videos and photos.

Build one, or come and watch

The design files are not out yet. They come once the first MOSS rolls and the parts have earned it. Until then, the door is the Discord: ask anything, tell us what we are doing wrong, it helps the next builder too. https://discord.com/invite/x2MeNmgveT

The build, day by day, is on X: @metrox_eth.

Data recorded by MOSS builders is meant to be pooled and open, so the shared model gets better with every robot. The rules we propose are in docs/data.md.

License

Code under Apache-2.0. Hardware files and documentation under CC BY 4.0. See NOTICE.