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Caduceus, a foil-wrapped foam-board robot, in front of a screen showing Hermes Agent
Caduceus, a foil-wrapped foam-board robot, in front of a screen showing Hermes AgentCredit: devorun/caduceus-robot

Caduceus: a voice robot body for Hermes Agent, wired up over MCP

Humanoid, MediumWorks with Hermes Agent

A foam-board ESP32 robot with four servos and an OLED face. You talk, Whisper transcribes, Hermes Agent decides, and it calls MCP tools that make the robot wave, walk forward or recite an anthem Hermes wrote.

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Caduceus was a solo build for the Nous Research Hermes Agent Creative Hackathon in May 2026. The body is an ESP32 WROOM-32D with a PCA9685 servo driver, four MG90S servos for two arms and two legs, and an SH1106 OLED face, on a foil-wrapped foam-board chassis.

A Python MCP server (caduceus_mcp.py) gives Hermes three tools: wave_hand, walk_forward and recite_anthem. The ESP32 runs an HTTP server, and the MCP server calls it over Wi-Fi. Speech goes through local Whisper on the PC, Hermes answers in hermes -z one-shot mode, and Edge TTS speaks the reply.

The builder lists the rough edges. Each round trip takes 25 to 30 seconds because hermes -z reloads the agent on every call, the narrow base tips during walks, and the onboard mic and speaker aren't used yet, so audio runs through the host PC.

How your agent drives it

Copied from the devorun/caduceus-robot README

  1. Shell
    $ cp mcp/caduceus_mcp.py ~/caduceus_mcp.py
  2. Shell
    $ hermes mcp add caduceus-robot --command "python3 ~/caduceus_mcp.py"
  3. Shell
    $ hermes mcp list

Any coding agent that can run a shell can run these. Read the README before you run anything on a robot that moves.

Ideas to try with it

Our ideas, not the builder's claims.

  1. Add a fourth MCP tool that nods yes or shakes no
  2. Have it wave whenever someone says hello on your Discord
  3. Swap the foam body for a 3D-printed shell with wider feet
1 more idea
  1. Move the voice loop onto the onboard mic and speaker
Source
devorun/caduceus-robot on GitHub
Last commit
2026-05-10
Builder
@Devran1An
Repo
devorun/caduceus-robot, 5 stars
Built with
ESP32, Hermes Agent

Guides: Give your AI agent a robot body · Robots you can build with AI

Parts notes for this device are in the Hermes Workshop catalog.

What to build next

Builds that share a board, robot or agent with this one.