French sculptor and designer Gaël Langevin of InMoov explains how an open source, 3D printed robot grew from a prosthetic hand project into a global community effort.
Langevin traces InMoov to a 2011 commission for a prosthetic hand that never went ahead. Using Blender, an open source 3D printer, and Arduino, he built a working hand and published its files on Thingiverse so others could adapt it.
The hand project led Langevin to develop a larger robot, with parts sized to fit a 12-centimeter cube and join through snap fittings or screws. Its components include 28 servos, two cameras, a motion sensor, and finger sensors for detecting contact and grip pressure. MyRobotLab helped synchronize its controllers.
Langevin estimates that around 200 InMoov robots have been built across 55 countries and 80 to 85 universities. Schools, hobbyists, and researchers have used the designs for prosthetics, robotics education, gesture tracking, and experiments with vision. Builders customize the robot’s colors, faces, and form, and share their own additions.
Langevin describes work on 3D printed legs that can support the robot affordably, alongside remote operation for hospitalized children and better calibration across community-built robots. Other goals include improving voice recognition in noisy settings and creating a shared data system so robots can learn and recognize objects across locations. He says the current system responds mainly through programmed behaviors rather than artificial intelligence.
In response to questions about AI and robot regulation, Langevin says the project’s intelligence is still limited and built around software and scripts. He argues that collaborative building in schools and communities can make people more aware of what they put into robots, and that shared knowledge helps society advance.
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Gaël Langevin, sculptor and designer behind InMoov, discusses building an open-source 3D-printed robot and its origins at Maker Faire Eindhoven with a CityTV.nl host.
