vdg · 17 June 2026

The robot, version zero.

Before there was hardware, there was this.

On 17 June we built a low-fidelity 3D model — deliberately rough — to plan the first tracked robot: chassis, tracks, sensor mast, and a simple “grab-and-relocate” mission loop (pick something up, carry it, set it down). Not a render to impress anyone — a thinking tool, to get the proportions and the moving parts right before cutting metal.

That design isn’t a model any more. It’s the tracked robot we now run — the one carrying our offline field brain on NVIDIA Jetson, sensing, deciding and acting with no cloud and no network.

Have a look below — drag to rotate, scroll to zoom. Low fidelity, real intent.

Low-fidelity design model · drag to rotate, scroll to zoom