491 stars on GitHub. Sawppy the Rover is a 3D-printed, motorized model of NASA's Mars rovers Curiosity and Perseverance, buildable for under $500 in parts. Created by Roger Randolph as a more accessible alternative to the JPL Open Source Rover, Sawppy replicates the iconic rocker-bogie suspension system that allows rovers to traverse rocky terrain with all six wheels remaining in contact with the ground. Source: https://github.com/Roger-random/Sawppy_Rover The suspension uses the same kinematics as the real Mars rovers — a passive differential mechanism connects the rocker-bogie suspension arms so the rover body stays level even when wheels traverse obstacles at different heights. All structural parts are fully 3D-printable on a standard FDM printer; the STL directory contains 30 tested parts. Drive hardware uses LX-16A serial bus servos (10 total: 6 wheel drive, 4 steering), which are significantly cheaper than the equivalent Dynamixel servos while offering position feedback. The control stack runs on a Raspberry Pi and supports Arduino wired control, R/C control, ROS Kinetic, ROS Melodic, and ROS2 Humble — including full Gazebo simulation support. An active builder community exists on Hackaday.io with numerous documented builds. A "Micro Sawppy" variant targeting $100 and elementary-school builders is also available. Live Onshape CAD allows full modification. License: MIT. --- ## Install Notes Sawppy's software stack varies by hardware variant — the original uses LewanSoul LX-16A serial bus servos; newer variants use different controllers. Software lives in separate platform-specific repos (search for "Sawppy ROS" or "Sawppy ESP32"). The orobot Program code is a reference stub. Start from the [Sawppy docs directory](https://github.com/Roger-random/Sawppy_Rover/tree/main/docs) which links the correct sub-project for your build.
Category: Mobile Robots
| Qty | Part | Notes | |-----|------|-------| | 1 | Motorization: Instead of using gearmotors with encoders managed by RoboClaw motor controllers, | — | | 1 | Construction Method: Instead of using the [Actobotics construction system](https://www.servocity.com/actobotics), | — | | 1 | **Simplest**: Wired control [running on an Arduino](https://github.com/Roger-random/Sawppy_Rover/tree/master/arduino_sawppy) instead of Raspberry Pi. Created as a [backup control option](https://newscrewdriver.com/2019/05/20/sawppy-roving-with-wired-handheld-controller/) in noisy RF environments where WiFi is unreliable. It also happens to feature the bare-bones version of Sawppy geometry calculations. Wired control meant skipping all the overhead of wireless communication. Cutting out all HTML code also meant this is a good basis for other control mechanisms: send desired speed and direction into Arduino and let it handle Sawppy chassis geometry calculation. | — | | 1 | **R/C control**: [lightly modified from my SGVHAK rover software](https://github.com/mw46d/SGVHAK_Rover) by Marco Walther (mw46d) for a Raspberry Pi-based way to interface with traditional remote control receivers. | — | | 1 | [Build blog](https://newscrewdriver.com/category/projects/sawppy-the-rover/) | — |