The Marco Robot Project
It started in 2017 with a robot called Qbo — a small, open-source humanoid robot with a round head, a pair of cameras for eyes, and a personality. Qbo could recognize faces, respond to voice commands, and navigate a room on its own. For JD, it was a first glimpse into what home robotics could actually be: not a Roomba, but something that felt almost alive.
That robot became Marco. And Marco became an obsession.
From Qbo to Marco
The Qbo platform was built around ROS (the Robot Operating System) and ran on an embedded Linux system. Getting it to do anything interesting meant diving into computer vision, sensor integration, speech recognition, and enough command-line work to make your eyes water. Marco was a hands-on education in robotics — no instructions, just curiosity and a lot of trial and error.
When Qbo2 arrived, it deepened everything. Better hardware, a more capable stack, and the growing ecosystem of AI tools meant Marco could do more — see more clearly, respond more naturally, and behave more like a robot that belonged in the room rather than just sitting in the corner.
Marco2: What’s Next
The next chapter is Marco2. With the rapid advances in large language models, computer vision, and edge AI, the possibilities for a home robot have changed dramatically. Marco2 is about integrating those capabilities — giving Marco a brain that can reason, converse, and respond to the world around it in real time.
This is still very much a personal project — experiments, failures, occasional breakthroughs, and a lot of documentation along the way. Follow along here as Marco2 takes shape.
Project Goals
- Natural language interaction using local LLMs
- Improved face and object recognition using modern vision models
- Autonomous navigation in a home environment
- Integration with home automation systems
- Documented builds, code, and lessons learned — posted here
Whether you’re a fellow robotics enthusiast, an AI tinkerer, or just curious about what someone does with a robot in their living room — you’re in the right place.