Spot Micro Quadruped — Jetson Nano (ROS Melodic)

Spot Micro Quadruped — Jetson Nano / ROS Melodic Port

Jetson-Nano-specific port of the SpotMicro design family. See also: SpotMicro (Pi) and SpotMicro ESP32 entries on orobot for other compute targets.

A 12-servo, 4-legged 3D-printed open-source quadruped running ROS Melodic on an NVIDIA Jetson Nano. This fork (0x49b/spotMicro-ROS-Melodic-Jetson-Nano) ports the original mike4192/spotmicro Raspberry Pi 3B + ROS Kinetic stack onto the Jetson Nano with ROS Melodic, unlocking the GPU for on-board SLAM, perception, and future learned-policy work.

The robot supports sit, stand, body angle, and walk control via two configurable gaits (8-phase stable gait by default; faster trot gait optional). Body-mounted RPLidar A1 enables real-time SLAM and 2D mapping. State is published over tf2 with open-loop calculated odometry.

Hardware

• Compute: NVIDIA Jetson Nano (this port). Original target was Raspberry Pi 3B.
• Frame: Thingiverse Spot Micro (KDY0523) — thing:3445283
• Servos: 12× PDI-HV5523MG (or cls6336hv — print files compatible)
• Servo control: PCA9685, i2c
• Power: 2S 4000 mAh LiPo direct to servo board; HKU5 5V/5A UBEC for Jetson + peripherals
• Sensing: RPLidar A1 (body-mounted)
• Optional: 16×2 i2c LCD panel for state readout

Software stack

• OS: Ubuntu 18.04 (for ROS Melodic on Jetson Nano). Original used Ubuntu 16.04 + ROS Kinetic.
• Framework: ROS Melodic catkin workspace
• Languages: C++ (motion control, kinematics) + Python (keyboard command, plot)
• Key packages: spot_micro_motion_cmd, spot_micro_keyboard_command, spot_micro_rviz (URDF), ros-i2cpwmboard, spot_micro_joy, lcd_monitor

Build flow

1. Flash Jetson Nano with Ubuntu 18.04 + ROS Melodic. Add a 1 GB SWAP partition (catkin will OOM without it).
2. Create a catkin workspace, clone this repo into src/, run git submodule update --init --recursive.
3. sudo apt-get install ros-melodic-joy ros-melodic-rplidar-ros ros-melodic-hector-slam libi2c-dev.
4. catkin config --cmake-args -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release && catkin build.
5. Calibrate all 12 servos using the spreadsheet + servo_move_keyboard workflow before powering the legs.
6. roslaunch spot_micro_motion_cmd motion_cmd.launch on the Jetson; roslaunch spot_micro_keyboard_command keyboard_command.launch from a remote machine.

Family cross-reference

This is one of three SpotMicro variants on orobot — pick the compute target that matches your build:

• SpotMicro (Raspberry Pi) — original mike4192/spotmicro, Pi 3B + ROS Kinetic.
• SpotMicro ESP32 — michaelkubina/spotmicroesp32, microcontroller-only port without ROS.
• SpotMicro Jetson Nano (this entry) — Jetson Nano + ROS Melodic, GPU-accelerated SLAM.

Source

• Repo: https://github.com/0x49b/spotMicro-ROS-Melodic-Jetson-Nano
• Commit: 8c027c8a357dceace856d586022954205bc247ed
• License: MIT
• Upstream: mike4192/spotmicro (this is a Jetson Nano fork)