Sawppy Rover

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 (this Print All set keeps the 23 canonical LX-16A parts plus an optional 2-part display housing — see Printing below).

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 which links the correct sub-project for your build.

Printing

Six-wheel rocker-bogie rover. The 23 canonical structural STLs below are from the upstream STL/ directory and match the BOM's LewanSoul LX-16A serial-bus servos (6 drive + 4 steering = 10 total). Print quantities are per rover, not one-each:

Wheels & steering (the big multiples):

• Wheel — print 6× (all six wheels)
• Wheel-Hub — print 6×
• Bogie-Wheels — print 6× (wheel mounts)
• Steering-Knuckle — print 4× (the four corner/steering wheels)
• Fixed-Knuckle — print 2× (the two middle, non-steering wheels)
• LX-16A---Coupler — print 6× (one per drive servo)
• LX-16A---Bracket — print ~10× (servo brackets; one per LX-16A)

Corners & suspension (print 1× unless noted):

• Front-Corner ×2, Rear-Corner ×2, Body-Corner ×4 (rocker-bogie corner brackets)
• Rocker ×2, Rocker-Body-Mount ×2, Bogie-Body ×2 (left + right suspension arms)
• DiffBrace, DiffEnd, DiffLink, DiffLower, DiffUpper — the passive differential (×1 each unless your build doc says otherwise)
• Rod-Support — for the 8 mm shafts (print as needed)
• Clip2n125, Clip3n20 — small retaining clips (print several of each)

Chassis / electronics (1× each):

• Battery-Tray, Power-Panel

Optional add-on (kept, ≤3 optional):

• DisplayBottom + DisplayTop — a small status-display housing (community add-on). Skip if you are not fitting a display.

Removed alternates (not needed for the LX-16A build): the upstream community modification set under modifications/Marco_Walther was trimmed out — AX-12-Bracket, AX-12-Coupler (these are for Dynamixel AX-12 servos, not the LX-16A in the BOM), and 25D-Coupler, Fixed-Knuckle-25D, Steering-Knuckle-25D (a 25 mm-motor variant). If you are building the AX-12 / 25D variant instead, print those from the upstream repo's modifications/ folder in place of the LX-16A brackets/knuckles.

Use ~3× 608 bearings per build along with M3 heat-set inserts. PLA on a standard FDM printer is fine.