Spanda

Spanda for Dummies

The no-jargon guide to writing your first autonomous robot program.

You do not need to be a Rust expert, a ROS guru, or an ML researcher. If you can read a short recipe and copy a command into a terminal, you can use Spanda.

This guide is the friendly on-ramp. When you want structured lessons with exercises, switch to Spanda 101.

All tutorials: Tutorials index

Who this is for

Robotics curious — “I have a lidar and no idea where to start”
Python/C++ developers tired of gluing five repos together
Safety reviewers who want to see rules in the source, not a slide deck
Anyone who opened rover.sd and thought “okay but what does any of this mean?”

Part	Chapter	What you’ll learn
I	What is Spanda, anyway?	The big picture in plain English
I	Your first five minutes	Install, check, run — done
II	Anatomy of a robot program	Sensors, actuators, safety, behaviors
II	AI without the scary parts	Why the compiler says “no” to raw LLM output
II	The ten commands you’ll actually use	CLI cheat sheet
III	Oops — common mistakes	Fixes for the errors everyone hits once
III	Glossary	Jargon → English

Total read time: ~45 minutes. Skim the cheat sheet and glossary anytime.

The one-minute version

Spanda lets you describe a robot in one file:

robot Rover {
  sensor lidar: Lidar on "/scan";
  actuator wheels: DifferentialDrive;

  safety {
    max_speed = 1.0 m/s;
    stop_if lidar.nearest_distance < 0.5 m;
  }

  behavior patrol() {
    loop every 100ms {
      wheels.drive(linear: 0.3 m/s, angular: 0.0 rad/s);
    }
  }
}

Then:

spanda check rover.sd    # does it make sense?
spanda run rover.sd      # run it (simulated — no hardware required)

That’s the whole idea: describe the robot, check it, run it.

Spanda vs the rest of your stack

Tool	What it’s great at	What Spanda adds
Python	ML, notebooks, quick scripts	Typed robot + safety in one language
C++	Drivers, hard real-time	Orchestration without rewriting drivers
ROS2	Messaging, ecosystem	Robot-native syntax + verify-before-deploy
Spanda	End-to-end autonomous logic	AI gate, units, hardware fit, simulation

Spanda is not trying to replace your favorite language. It orchestrates perception → AI → safety → motion in one place.

Where to go next

You want…	Read this
All tutorials (index)	Tutorials index
Step-by-step lessons	Spanda 101
Fast install	installation.md
First project in 10 min	getting-started.md
Flagship demo	killer-demo.md
Full language spec	spanda-language.md
Examples library	examples/README.md

Spanda — the pulse of autonomous intelligence.

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