wendy tour

Watch a simulated Go2 walk in your browser, or set up your first physical Wendy device.

Choose your path

wendy tour

In an interactive terminal, Walk a simulated robot appears first and is selected by default. Choose Set up a physical device when you have hardware ready.

You can select either route directly:

wendy tour --simulator
wendy tour --hardware

Simulated robot

The managed Go2 virtual device requires macOS or Linux, QEMU with ARM64 firmware, and a Docker builder with Buildx for the initial build or runtime updates. It uses four virtual CPUs and 4 GiB of memory. Apple Silicon uses hardware acceleration; x86 hosts use slower emulation. The first run downloads the OS and robot assets and builds the runtime. Allow several minutes and disk space for the images. No physical robot, cloud account, or host Python installation is required.

On macOS with Homebrew, the tour offers to install QEMU and repair missing firmware. On Linux with apt-get or dnf, it offers to install QEMU and its firmware; that install runs sudo, which may ask for your password. On macOS it also offers to install or start a Docker runtime when a build needs one; on Linux, install and start Docker yourself. These prompts default to Yes. A healthy existing simulation can run again without starting Docker.

See the quickstart for prerequisites. Windows users can use the physical-device route or the separate local Docker robot demo. For device inspection with a generic virtual device on native Windows, see Windows foreground VMs. To build and deploy local apps to a VM on Windows, run the Linux Wendy CLI, QEMU, and your container builder inside WSL2.

The tour creates a dedicated Go2 VM and opens its browser viewer. The robot walks a short arc. Success requires a measured change in its position and confirmation that the movement stopped. An interactive guide then helps you program the robot, change its walk, or drive it in the browser.

Program your robot

Choose Build a robot app after the first walk. Pick an idea:

The guide creates an editable Python project under your tour's apps directory, shows you a first change to make, and offers to open the code in your editor. Choose Deploy to run it on this tour's virtual Go2, then edit and deploy again without leaving the guide. Returning to a project preserves your edits.

These apps use ROS 2 to read sensors and send movement commands. The simulator handles balance and walking. Driving apps have explicit controls; deploying Patrol alone does not start its route. The next menu selects Start or Open your app for you. Returning to the main guide stops movement apps and releases their robot controls, so you can try another idea or drive in the viewer. Your code stays saved for the next deployment.

Choose Finish for now when done. The guide offers to stop the simulator or leave it running, and shows how to resume later. Ctrl+C exits the current tour.

Change the movement and repeat

Choose Change the walk to try a straight line or turn the other way immediately. The tour saves your choice in ~/Documents/wendy-robot-tour/tour.json. You can also edit turn_rps to 0 for a straight walk, then rerun:

wendy tour --simulator

This reuses the saved VM. You can edit duration_seconds within the supported range of 1 to 8 seconds, or turn_rps between -1 and 1. The starter's forward_mps is bounded between 0.55 and 0.6 metres per second. These settings control the simulated robot only.

To keep a separate starter and VM:

wendy tour --simulator --project ./my-robot-tour

If a step fails in an interactive terminal, the tour explains the error and offers to retry that step. Fix the issue and press Enter to continue, or decline and resume later with the same command. Existing VMs are reused. If VM creation was interrupted, the tour preserves the incomplete files and restarts creation under the saved VM name. If another controller owns the simulated robot, release its controls in the viewer before retrying. Ctrl+C interrupts the demonstration; use the printed VM stop command when you also want to shut down its virtual device.

Physical device

wendy tour --hardware guides you through device setup, discovery, optional Wi-Fi configuration, and a sample app. Use an interactive terminal. Check the board-specific setup guide for storage, power, recovery mode, and cable requirements. Review the selected storage before confirming a flash, which erases that storage.

At the Wi-Fi step, the wizard tries to prefill the host computer's current SSID. If it cannot detect one, enter the network name yourself. Cloud enrollment and coding-agent setup are optional. The physical-device route does not command robot motion.

Cancellation and exit status

Declining an installer's erase confirmation cancels that setup step. The tour does not treat it as a completed installation or proceed to first-boot discovery.

An installer launched by the tour returns exit status 130 to its parent when cancelled. The tour translates that internal signal into user cancellation. A normally launched wendy tour exits with status 0 for this cancellation, as it does when you quit the wizard, so status 0 alone does not prove setup completed. Other failures use the CLI's exit status contract.