K-Scale KOS API

Dropbear integrates with the K-Scale KOS (Kernel for Open-Source) API, an open standard for humanoid robot control developed by K-Scale Labs. This enables cross-platform compatibility — skills and controllers built for KOS can run on Dropbear, and vice versa.

What is KOS?

KOS is an open-source operating system and API standard for humanoid robots. It defines a common interface for:

• Actuator control — standardized joint position, velocity, and torque commands
• Sensor access — unified IMU, camera, and force sensor APIs
• Skill deployment — portable neural network policies across robot platforms
• Teleoperation — common teleop protocol for remote control

Dropbear × KOS

Our KOS compatibility layer translates between Dropbear's ROS 2 stack and the KOS gRPC API. This means:

• Skills trained on other KOS-compatible robots can be deployed to Dropbear
• Dropbear skills can be shared with the broader KOS ecosystem
• Researchers can benchmark across different humanoid platforms using the same API

# Install the KOS compatibility layer
pip install dropbear-kos

# Start the KOS bridge (translates KOS gRPC ↔ ROS 2)
dropbear kos bridge --port 50051

# Now any KOS client can connect
from kscale import KOS
robot = KOS("localhost:50051")
robot.actuator.set_position(joint_id=1, position=0.5)

Supported Features