Vulkan Research

Robotics research, built in the open.

An independent research lab building the next generation of open robots, and expanding access to robotics knowledge for builders worldwide.

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Orion: Expressive desk-lamp robot
01 · Robotics, Embedded AI

Orion

Active since July 2026

A home robot in the form of a desk lamp that listens, speaks and moves with character.

Orion is a home robot in the form of a desk lamp, built to assist and interact in a warm, playful, expressive way. Its onboard computer runs microphone processing, wake detection, speech recognition, speech synthesis and the motion runtime.

  1. v13 Jul 2026 – 29 Sep 2026First build on the open LeLamp reference design: servo-driven lamp arm, Raspberry Pi 5 and ReSpeaker microphones running the first voice and motion pipeline.
  2. v230 Sep 2026 – presentRedesigned body: a 230 × 210 mm base, 150 mm and 111 mm arm spans, and a 140 mm head carrying the camera, speaker and LED ring. 25 printed PLA pieces.
Stack Raspberry Pi 5, ReSpeaker 2-Mics HAT, Rustpotter, Qwen ASR, Piper TTSProject log →
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