OpenArm is Enactic’s fully open-source bimanual robot arm platform — built for physical AI research in contact-rich environments, where a robot needs to actually touch, push, and manipulate the real world rather than just reach through empty space. Every part of it, down to the electronics and firmware, is open-source, with native ROS 2 support.
The mechanism
Each arm carries seven revolute joints — a genuinely 7-DOF serial chain, chosen for the dexterity and singularity-avoidance a 6-DOF arm can’t match — plus a 2-finger parallel-jaw gripper at the wrist. The gripper’s second finger joint mechanically mimics the first, so each arm contributes eight real actuated degrees of freedom (seven joints plus one gripper axis); across both arms of the bimanual platform, that’s sixteen in total. Enactic designs the actuators to be back-drivable, prioritizing safe, compliant contact with people and objects over raw stiffness.
Choosing a variant
Both variants are the complete bimanual platform, differing only in end-effector generation:
- OpenArm v2.0 is the current, actively developed hardware, fitted with Enactic’s newer pinch-style gripper.
- OpenArm v1.0 is the original hardware generation, fitted with an earlier parallel-link gripper design, kept here for compatibility with existing v1.0 builds.
About this file — read before importing
This links directly to openarm_description, Enactic’s own repository. ARMOR links directly to that repository rather than re-hosting anything, so what you get is exactly what Enactic publishes, unmodified.