RoboAPI
A unified REST API for robots, like Stripe but for hardware
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Every robot manufacturer ships a different SDK and a different protocol. A Boston Dynamics Spot speaks nothing like a Universal Robots arm. Every team building on top of robots rewrites the same integration layer from scratch. This is a massive tax on the industry.RoboAPI is a unified API layer that abstracts all of that into one clean developer experience. One SDK, one API key, any robot — simulated or real hardware.You can connect a simulated robot and read live telemetry in under 5 minutes: pip install fastapi uvicorn roslibpy uvicorn api.main:app --reload curl -X POST localhost:8000/v1/robots/connect -d '{"robot_id":"bot-01","brand":"simulated"}' curl localhost:8000/v1/robots/bot-01/sense It also connects to real ROS2 robots via rosbridge — I tested it today controlling a turtlesim robot drawing circles through the API.The architecture is pluggable — each robot brand is a separate adapter implementing a common interface (like a payment gateway in Stripe). Adding a new brand means one file.Currently supports: simulated robots and any ROS2 robot. Boston Dynamics and Universal Robots adapters are next.Would love feedback from anyone working in robotics — especially on the API design and what's missing for real-world use.
HN · launched Apr 24, 2026 · 11 upvotes (top 38%) · 0 views
Niche: robotics software and platforms · 195 launches, 9 in the last 7 days ▼ -36% · Explore this niche →
Category and tags
- Horizontal
- Dev tools
- Developer
- Not AI
- Commercial product
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More like this: all 195 launches in robotics software and platforms →
Could you build this?
No Building a universal abstraction layer for disparate robotics hardware requires physical access to expensive robots, deep embedded systems engineering, and low-latency real-time control protocols.
What it would actually take: Requires a distributed edge gateway architecture communicating with heterogeneous industrial buses (CAN, EtherCAT, ROS/ROS2, vendor-specific gRPC/TCP protocols) paired with high-level REST/WebSocket cloud endpoints. The difficult engineering lies in deterministic real-time control, safety-critical interlocking, kinematics translation, and physical device driver reverse-engineering. Demands physical robotic hardware labs and specialized mechatronics/robotics firmware engineers.
Discussion
2 comments analyzed.
Competitors mentioned: ROS (Robot Operating System), Transitive Robotics, Boston Dynamics, Universal Robots
Concerns raised: REST is inefficient for robot interactions; pub/sub or blackboard patterns are more natural, Manufacturers resistant to opening robots to standardization, Fragmented adoption of ROS outside academia despite it being the standard
Feature requests: Move commands from REST to pub/sub architecture, Blackboard pattern implementation for fleet layer, MQTT for commands alongside WebSocket telemetry
Competitors
Other products that read as similar to this one : 140 launches clear the similarity bar, closest 8 shown.
Attention rank: #51 of 141 (itself plus its competitors, highest first, normalized so YC and Product Hunt are compared fairly).
Launched 167 days after the earliest competitor.
- roboArm · github · 2026-10-27 · 27 upvotes · similarity 0.46
- Sowbot · hn · 2026-02-23 · 181 upvotes · similarity 0.46
- MomoAPI · ph · 2026-10-02 · 1 upvotes · similarity 0.43
- ManiLoop · github · 2026-09-16 · 12 upvotes · similarity 0.42
- primebot-t1-sdk · github · 2026-10-07 · 16 upvotes · similarity 0.41
- Genuine Robotics · ph · 2026-10-19 · 1 upvotes · similarity 0.41
- KeyoAPI · ph · 2026-09-20 · 1 upvotes · similarity 0.40
- Dynamic Robots · ph · 2026-10-31 · 1 upvotes · similarity 0.40
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