our story
FrodoBots Lab began with a simple question: what if robotics data could be crowdsourced and gamified? From sidewalk robot experiments to one of the largest real-world datasets, our journey now leads to the BitRobot Network—a global platform turning participation into real-world robotics breakthroughs.
2022
FrodoBots Labs
founded
FrodoBots started as a weekend project by brothers Michael and Sam Cho to gamify robotics data collection. It quickly grew into a global effort connecting gamers, robots, and researchers—laying the foundation for the BitRobot Network.
jul 2023
ET Fugi
SN/01
Mario Kart in Real Life
FrodoBots launched its first game, turning sidewalk robots into playable characters in a global scavenger hunt. Thousands joined across 40+ cities, showing how network incentives can drive large-scale robotics data collection.
may 2024
2k dataset
is published on Hugging Face
01
More than 25x larger than other datasets
The FrodoBots 2K Dataset is a diverse collection of camera footage, GPS, IMU, audio recordings & human control data collected from ~2,000 hours of teleoperated sidewalk robots driving in 10+ cities. The FrodoBots-2k dataset is the largest of its kind in the public domain.
02
Real-world data, real research impact
FrodoBots data enabled UC Berkeley’s RAIL Lab to train a state-of-the-art generalist navigation model, validating its value for frontier robotics research and proving that crowdsourced, real-world data can meaningfully advance embodied AI.
oct 2024
First Earth Rovers
competition takes place at IROS
Research
SN/01
Autonomous Mario Kart in the Wild
FrodoBots realized that value lies not just in collecting data, but in testing models in the real world. To support this, they launched Earth Rovers—a robotic navigation challenge featured in a paper co-authored with leading researchers from Google DeepMind and academia.
feb 2025
FrodoBots teams
up with Protocol Labs
Founder Juan Benet and former ecosystem lead Jonathan Victor join to develop the BitRobot Network—scaling FrodoBots’ early experiments into a platform for real-world data generation, model development, and evaluation across diverse robotics use cases.
BitRobot is built on the insight that data from any use case improves models for all use cases — enabling cross-domain learning through a diverse, shared robotics network.
FrodoBots helped launch the network and build the first subnets—but BitRobot is designed for broad participation, enabling anyone to contribute. Today, FrodoBots is one of many contributors in the growing BitRobot ecosystem, helping scale embodied AI globally.
mar 2025
The BitRobot Network whitepaper proposes a subnet-based architecture designed for distributed robotic work and collaboration.
Today
Global Collaboration, Real-World Impact
Today
The BitRobot Network is where real-world robotics meets global coordination—unleashing the collective power of people, machines, and code to drive embodied AI forward.
Explore the timeline