Kaia.ai Arduino/ROS2 home robots

Kaia.ai is an open-source software platform to run apps on (consumer/home) robots. For now, it uses ROS2 for mapping/navigation/SLAM and Arduino-compabile firwmare.

Here is a current 3/2025 brief demo (I have not released the apps setup yet).

Here are current 3/2025 build, setup, bring-up and operation instructions.

Here are troubleshooting instructions.

Here is the technical support forum.

Components

Kaia.ai robotics software platform is actively evolving and currently consists of these parts:

• Cloud software infrastructure (TODO)
• robot skills store (TODO)
• Micro-ROS Arduino library for Kaia.ai-compatible robots repo
  • Micro-ROS LiDAR telemetry receiver package
• End-user and development ROS2 Docker images repo
• Robot Gazebo simulation ROS2 package
• Kaia.ai Python ROS2 software wrapper package
• Robot operation ROS2 repo, including SLAM mapping, navigation, frontier exploration, etc.
• Robot keyboard teleoperation package
• WebRTC-based image/video/data streaming
  • Python-based image/audio sensing, processing (ML), decision making (ML/AI), robot face animation (TODO)

Kaia.ai compatible robots

• Maker’s Pet Loki 200mm 3D-printed pet robot
• Maker’s Pet Fido 250mm 3D-printed pet robot
• Maker’s Pet Snoopy 300mm 3D-printed pet robot
• Maker’s Pet Mini 125mm 3D-printed educational robot
• Add your own version to the list

Supported LiDAR sensors

• YDLIDAR X4 (default), X2/X2L, X3, X3PRO, SCL
• Neato XV11
• Xiaomi Roborock 1st gen LDS02RR (~$16 off AliExpress including shipping)
• SLAMTEC RPLIDAR A1
• 3irobotix Delta-2A, Delta-2B, Delta-2G
• LDROBOT LD14P
• Camsense X1

The entire up-to-date list of supported LiDAR is here.

Installation and Command Reference

There are two ways to install ROS2 and Kaia.ai on your PC - using Docker (Windows, Linux) or Ubuntu 24.04 (physical PC of virtual machine). Follow the installation instructions here.

Watch build, setup and bringup videos

• Note: these videos are outdated; updated videos will be published shortly for Maker’s Pet Mini

Launch ROS2/Kaia.ai (Docker only)

The Kaia.ai Docker image contains ROS2 and micro-ROS pre-configured with additional Kaia.ai ROS2 packages.

Open a Windows command shell or Windows PowerShell window and type the command below. This should give you a bash prompt. Note that your c:\maps will be mapped to /root/maps to store navigation maps. Feel free to change c:\maps path to a more suitable location, e.g. c:\Users\MyUserName\maps.

# Windows WSL2
docker pull kaiaai/kaiaai:iron
docker run --name makerspet -it --rm -v c:\maps:/root/maps -p 8888:8888/udp -p 4430:4430/tcp -e DISPLAY=host.docker.internal:0.0 -e LIBGL_ALWAYS_INDIRECT=0 kaiaai/kaiaai:iron

# Ubuntu
sudo docker pull kaiaai/kaiaai:iron
sudo docker run --name makerspet -it --rm -v ~/maps:/root/maps -p 8888:8888/udp -p 4430:4430/tcp -e DISPLAY -e QT_X11_NO_MITSHM=1 --volume="/tmp/.X11-unix:/tmp/.X11-unix:rw" --volume="${XAUTHORITY}:/root/.Xauthority" kaiaai/kaiaai:iron

Get an aditional bash prompt by opening another Windows command shell or Windows PowerShell window and typing:

# Windows WSL2
docker exec -it makerspet bash

# Ubuntu
sudo docker exec -it makerspet bash

If you installed ROS2/Kaia.ai without Docker directly on a Ubuntu PC/VM, just boot your Ubuntu PC to a bash prompt.

Command cheat sheets

makerspet_mini is the default robot model. When using another robot model, change the default model using Kaia.ai CLI. For example, the command below sets the default robot model to makerspet_loki.

kaia config robot.model makerspet_loki

Operate a physical robot

Manual operation

```

Launch the physical robot

ros2 launch kaiaai_bringup physical.launch.py

Drive robot manually

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