From prototype to Pro
A personal computer for robots.
No CAD. No code. Start free in your browser. Start from a robot you like, make it yours, and let the next person build on it.
Real footage · a brick walker on a Cube
Free in your browser · No account · Real machines built
Start free
Free comes first.
Trying is free today, with no account and nothing to install. The plan: battles and new bodies stay free with a queue, training gets a free allowance, and you pay when it becomes a real thing.
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Free
Try
Pick a robot, say a sentence, watch it move.
Open now -
Free
Battle
Your robot against others. Same floor, same rules.
Building -
Free
Grow
Ask for a new body. It joins the queue by species and gene.
Planned -
Free
Branch
Start from any robot and grow your own line.
Partly open -
Allowance
Train
Teach it a new skill. A free allowance first.
Planned -
Paid
Build
Goal: hardware from about $100.
Planned -
Paid
Deliver
From prototype to Pro, paid by the project.
Planned
This is the plan, not a price list. Only the first step is fully open today. You don't have to climb in order: teams with a real task can come straight to us.
The problem
Software breaks in one place. Hardware breaks in nine.
That is nine squares. Any one of them blocked stops the project, because you cannot ship eight-ninths of a robot.
They are also coupled. In software, you can often change one thing and test it. In hardware, one moved hole restarts all three tracks: the motor no longer fits, so the current changes, so the board changes, so the code changes, so you print the part again — and the hole moves again.
So nobody fills nine squares alone. You assemble a team before you can even start. Meanwhile the tool that is supposed to help takes years to master, and what moved on screen still fails on the bench. Demand for smart hardware keeps climbing; the number of people who can actually build it does not.
| Shape | Electronics | Software | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Idea | If you cannot draw it, you cannot discuss it | No idea how many motors, or what rating | No idea whether the logic is feasible |
| Prototype | Model, print, assemble, rework | Select, wire, debug, fry a board | Firmware, comms, tuning |
| Product | Tolerances, tooling, batch consistency | Boards, certification, supply chain | Updates, stability, production |
3 stages × 3 skill sets — the n⁹ hurdle
The platform
Build. Plug in. Say.
We swap the prototype row for three things you can start in a browser tab.
Build the body
Build a mechanism the way you would build with bricks. The connection carries the constraint: assemble it wrong and it does not fit; assemble it right and it actually moves. You never open CAD.
Plug in the control module
The Cube is the control module. It drives the motors and reads the sensors: distance, attitude, sound, vision. Drag in what moves and senses, and the Cube runs it. No part selection, no datasheets.
Say what it should do
Capability means the robot's skills. Say what you want in a sentence, or tap an example, and it finds a robot that fits and shows it moving. Today it understands a short list of requests, and the list keeps growing. You never have to learn a language to get it moving.
What you see first is a fast preview of how the parts move together. Walking is then tested in a physics simulator, and finally on the floor. Every part in the model is a part in your hand, one to one, and some things only the real machine can settle.
Grow
Robots grow like species.
Start from a robot that moves. Change one gene, and a new branch grows. Every branch here is a real design.
Get-up robot
The five-day case. On October 28 it stood up on a Cube. It still wobbles.
Same joint box, new legs
Built with the same joint box. It lifts a foot but can't stand on one yet.
Random genes
The computer starts from random genes, tries lots of bodies and keeps the best walkers.
Found by the computer
One of the best picks after the computer tried lots of designs.
One-motor walker
Built fresh from rules: legs that slide flat and toes that interlock, so it stands without rocking.
+ longer shin
One gene changed: a longer shin, so it stands taller.
Two legs → four
The same legs, copied and added at the back. Still one motor.
Four-leg linkage
Four linkage legs, driven by one motor through gears.
+ two motors
One motor per side: pause one side and it turns.
+ motor per leg
One motor for every leg.
Your branch
Ask for one change and grow your own branch. The queue isn't open yet.
Tap a branch. See the whole family tree →
3C Store
Nobody fills nine squares alone.
The PC gave everyone a computer. The App Store let everyone build on it. Robots are next.
Every robot's card shows the same nine squares. Fill one that is still open. What you make is where the next person starts.
Get-up robot
Walker
Four-leg design
Your robot
Rows: idea, prototype, product. Columns: shape, electronics, software. ✓ got there. + still open.
Design preview, with ticks set by hand for now. We're building this. Our share page is online with sample robots; no outside users yet.
Proof
What exists today. Go and check.
A library of 300+ mechanisms, and they all move
Not drawings — every one of them moves in the browser preview and is there to view in 3D. More than twenty mechanism families, each one the thing you already know from a real machine: the differential in a car, the worm drive in powered blinds, the four-bar linkage in an excavator boom. Ask for a mechanism that turns rotation into straight-line travel and you get working candidates back, instead of a catalogue to browse.
One real case: request to standing in five days
October 23, we asked for a new robot. October 25, it was built. October 28, it stood up on the Cube, running a small network trained in simulation. It still wobbles after standing. This is the prototype stage.
Real machines, on the floor
Mechanisms from the library exist in physical form and have been built and photographed — gears, linkages, cams, differentials, tracks. Separately, we have built a metal quadruped that walks, with a gait trained rather than hand-written, running on the machine itself. That robot was engineered by hand, not by this workflow.
Diagrams — the library shows every one of these actually moving
MakerKit Pro
MakerKit gets it moving. MakerKit Pro makes it hold up.
The method does not change. The parts change — and the checks have to reach the real floor.
| MakerKit | MakerKit Pro | What changes | |
|---|---|---|---|
| C₁ Construct | Plastic bricks on a standard grid | Metal and 3D-printed structural parts | The constraints are identical; the parts can now take the load |
| C₂ Cube | Control module with toy motors and sensors | Torque-controlled actuators, with encoders and inertial sensing | The controller is chosen and verified for each machine |
| C₃ Capability | Steps you can see and adjust | The same logic, plus motion that can be trained instead of scripted | You still just give it a motion |
| Constraints | Checked on screen | Checked on the real machine, from first power-on to the floor | Some checks only the real machine can settle |
A machine that passes in simulation is not yet a machine that stands up. Somewhere it has to touch the world — a foot against the ground, a fingertip against an object, a rotor against the air — and what happens at that contact is not something a screen can tell you.
That is what Pro is. What you get back is not tougher parts; it is a calibrated parameter set that already runs on the machine.
One framework — the quantities that go into it differ
Who it's for
Three people arrive here, and they need different things.
Educators and makers
A class, a workshop or a weekend goes from an idea to a machine that moves — without a lab, a machine shop, or an engineer on staff. Students finish holding something they designed, not something that came in a box.
Start free →R&D and product teams
Settle whether the mechanism works before anyone cuts metal. Then carry the same design forward — real actuators, real structure, a machine calibrated on your own floor — instead of throwing it away and starting again.
Talk to us →OEMs, integrators and labs
Take the modules on their own and put them in a machine of your own design. No whole-machine minimum, and they are built to work inside hardware that is not ours — the protocol and SDK are open.
See what we supply →What we supply
Take a module, a machine, or the whole capability.
Whole machines are expensive to ship and slow to deliver. Broken down, every layer stands on its own.
Component supply
Joint actuators — motor, reduction and encoder as one unit. Driver boards with firmware, protocol and SDK. Structural parts in metal, printed or brick. Sold individually, no whole-machine minimum, and shipped with calibration parameters: bolt it on and it works, including inside somebody else's machine.
Request a quote →Custom robotics
Quadruped, robot arm, dexterous hand, heavy-lift drone. Same kit, different topology: one actuator module becomes a quadruped, a biped or a wheeled base, and what changes is link length and joint order. You are not paying anyone to start from zero.
Tell us the scenario →Offshore engineering
The platform, the calibration work, and the actuators and drives — delivered as a whole to your site, with our engineers working alongside your team. For customers who need production in a particular country, or who want the capability resident rather than rented.
Talk about deployment →Why this can ship anywhere
Because none of it depends on any one country's supply chain.
Ordinary parts
Motors, bearings, screws — orderable online, from more than one place, with nothing sitting on a long lead time.
Printable structure
A desktop printer makes the parts. No machine shop and no tooling to fund, so a line can stand up somewhere it otherwise could not.
Transmittable drawings
The design travels as files, not containers. Send them and it is made locally, close to your customers — the United States included.
Landed cost is transparent: tell us the country and we will work it out with you before you commit.
About
We build the path from bricks to real machines.
MakerKit started from one observation: hardware stays in the hands of a few, not because good ideas are rare, but because nine separate things have to go right before anybody sees the first motion.
So we built the part that removes the wait — a browser platform where a mechanism is assembled, driven and given behaviour, and a library of mechanisms that all genuinely move. On the desk, those same mechanisms exist in bricks. Past the desk, we have built metal machines with torque-controlled joints that have to survive a real floor. Bringing them onto the same method is the road ahead.
We supply modules, build machines for a scenario, and deploy the whole capability to a customer's site. If there is a mechanism you are stuck on, send it to us — we will show it moving.
Questions
The five things people ask first.
Is this a toy or a development tool?
Do I need CAD or programming experience?
What exactly is the difference between MakerKit and MakerKit Pro?
Can you supply just one actuator, or just a driver board?
Can this be produced in my country?
Contact
Tell us what you're building.
Two things happen on this page: people try the platform, and people ask us to build something. Either is a good first message. Send us the mechanism you are stuck on and we will show it moving.
contact@makerkit.com