Beam Bots - Resilient Robotics on the BEAM

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Beam Bots progress update — the quiet fortnight edition:

  • Gus Workman gave Beam Bots a shoutout in his Nerves Meetup EU talk about the official Nerves Starter Kit — balance bot plans brewing
  • Servo driver architecture rework underway for smoother coordinated moves and better serial bus management across Feetech and Robotis integrations
  • Nx 0.11.0 bumped in bb core — FP8 support, multi-device execution via Nx.Mesh, and Nx.runtime_call/3
  • Dependabot kept the ecosystem tidy while I was elbow-deep in serial protocols

Full post: Week Eleven: The Quiet Fortnight | Beam Bots

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Beam Bots Progress Update — Week Thirteen

The latest from the Beam Bots project:

  • First community-built driver — GitHub - BeautifulGirlCoffee/bb_ufactory: Beam Bots integration for uFactory cobot arms · GitHub by @oullette integrates uFactory xArm cobots (xArm5/6/7, Lite6, xArm850) with joint/Cartesian motion, force/torque
    sensing, collision detection, and a 100Hz control loop
  • bb_policy proposal picked up — @joelpaulkoch is working on an implementation to run learned behaviours (e.g. HuggingFace LeRobot models) on the BEAM via ONNX
  • Elixir 1.20.0-rc.2 is out — ~10% faster compilation, type inference across clauses, redundant clause detection. Phoenix and LiveView already shipping compatibility fixes
  • Kino 0.19.0 adds :min/:max/:step to number inputs — useful for constraining joint angle controls in Livebook
  • The usual Dependabot gardening across the ecosystem

Full post: Week Thirteen: Other People's Robots | Beam Bots

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Beam Bots Progress Update — Week Fifteen

The latest Beam Bots progress update is out:

  • Servo driver rework shipped — both bb_servo_feetech and bb_servo_robotis v0.2.2 replace GenServer message passing with an ETS-backed 100Hz fixed-rate control loop. Batched
    writes, observable state from any process, and safer arming that prevents stale-goal jumps.
  • Code Camp Wellington — gave a talk based on Zach Daniel’s “Building on Bedrock: Elixir’s Fundamental Design Advantage” with a Beam Bots aside.
  • Next up — PR to pkinney/robotis for sync_write_raw support to bring Robotis write batching on par with Feetech.

Breaking changes in the servo drivers if you’re using them — details in the post.

Full update: Week Fifteen: Ticks and Talks | Beam Bots

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Beam Bots progress update for April 2026 — a quiet month from me but a busy one from the community.

Highlights:

  • bb_tui — @mcass19 built a full terminal dashboard for BB robots using his own ex_ratatui library (Elixir bindings to Rust ratatui via Rustler). Safety controls, joint manipulation, event streams, parameter editing, and remote
    node attach — all from the terminal. Near feature-parity with bb_liveview. Repo
  • bb_ufactory on real hardware — @houlette’s community-built uFactory xArm driver has been tested against a real xArm unit. First community driver to hit that milestone. Video
  • bb_jido proposal accepted — Jido autonomous agent framework integration is a go. Where bb_reactor handles workflows, Jido agents handle goal-directed decision making.
  • Dependency gardening: Spark 2.6.1, Igniter 0.7.7, LiveView 1.1.28 bumped across the ecosystem.

Also moving to monthly updates going forward.

Full post: April 2026: Chocolate Eggs and Terminal UIs | Beam Bots

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