Table of Contents

• D-Robotics RDK X5

• Exoot

• Teardown 2025

• FAB25 in Czech Republic

D-Robotics RDK X5

This week Editor David Groom moderated a live online event with D-Robotics (d-robotics.cc) to talk about their new RDK X5, a cutting-edge robotics development board, and demonstrate OriginMan and OriginBot. It was pretty cool to see what the D-Robotics team were demonstrating.

The team from D-Robotics showed the new RDK X5 board which is intended for edge AI applications. (Tech specs here.) Frank Chen said that the board is not just a single-board computer but RDK X5 is an “all-in-one robotics development kit, which is both a hardware and software platform.”

Marketing Director Lisa Li demo’d a small dog robot that reacted to her hand gestures.

Frank Chen shared his screen to demonstrate facial and gesture recognition.

Michael Hart, an independent robot developer from the UK showed off the OriginBot platform, an open source robot kit available at originbot.org.

Here’s a complete recording of the event.

Exoot

Exoot is an art collective from the Netherlands led by Tristan Kruithof. Several cars from Exoot were on display at Maker Faire Lille. Exoot team member Wilco Botermans was off to the side operating the vehicle, which had all sorts of moving parts.

A second vehicle, even more unusual, is known as SCUBABIANCHI. A man (a mannequin) sits inside a car filled with water and goldfish are swimming around.

I didn’t get a chance to meet Tristan but Wilco said he closely resembled the man with the scuba gear.

Here’s a fun video of SCUBABIANCHI on the street.

Teardown 2025

Cory Doctorow was a keynote speaker at Teardown 2025 in Portland, Oregon. Make: Editor David Groom was also there and he also liked the talk by Alex Glow on Mind-Altering Gadgets.

David wrote about Bunnie Huang: “For as long as I can remember, #bunnie has been my #hardware hero and inspiration; beyond blown away hearing his plans to #democratize and create trust in the 28nm #silicon #fab process!”

FAB25 in Czech Republic

FAB25 is for anyone passionate about making, innovation, and technology.

Next week, I’ll be heading off to the Czech Republic, the home of Prusa Research, for Fab25 Conference. The event brings together people from Fab Labs around the world along with makers, artists, and policy makers. The conferemce starts in Brno and then moves to Prague. Participants will move from one city to the next on the Maker Train. Here’s the invitational video.

If you’ll be at FAB25, let me know. I’d love to meet up. Personally, I’m looking to see what happens on the Maker Train.

Make Things is a weekly newsletter for the Maker community from Make:. This newsletter lives on the web at makethings.make.co

I’d love to hear from you if you have ideas, projects or news items about the maker community. Email me - [email protected].