15 ms·
Berkeley Blue – Accelerating robotics through low-cost hardware
- hellllllllooo 8y agoDefine low-cost? What sensors are being used in the video?
- detaro 8y agoAccording to the paper, "can be <$5000 if a run of >1500 is made"
- human_scientist 8y agoWhat is the expected lifetime?
- monkmartinez 8y agoThat seems ridiculously expensive. How much is a Universal Robotics "Co-Bot" or one of Kuka's lower end models?
- sorryforthethro 8y agoMight be wrong, Co-Bots start at $35k and Kukas are custom-built, often get over 6 figures.
- throwaway287391 8y agoIt seems to be on the very cheap end if it would qualify as an "industrial robotic arm" (I don't know if it does). I found this paper from 2012 [1] with a list of "Low price industrial robotic arms" (Table 2) and the cheapest one there is $17k. [1] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/241632269_A_brief_survey_of_commercial_robotic_arms_for_research_on_manipulation https://www.researchgate.net/publication/241632269_A_brief_s...
- monkmartinez 8y agoNot Industrial... "During a 7 unit fabrication run in-house, Bill of Materials (BoM) cost for each arm was tracked at $3328 as shown in Table II. Plastics were printed on Markforged Onyx One and Monoprice MP Select Mini 3D printers. About 75% of our prototype costs were motors and driver boards."
- detaro 8y agoWhat's not industrial about that quote? That they used 3D printing to prototype? That said, they seem to aim primarily at labs, not factory floors.
- detaro 8y agoCobots are a multiple of that, and even a lot simpler arms easily go for 10k or more.
- jonathankoren 8y agoThe arms in a CafeX are $25k. https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2018/05/08/this-25000-robot-wants-to-put-your-starbucks-barista-out-of-business.html https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2018/05/08/this-25000-robot-wants-t...
- taneq 8y agoI was so disappointed when I found out that thing is just a robot arm that takes a cup from a traditional coffee vending machine and puts it in front of the customer window. It seems weird that we don't have a robot system that can make a coffee using a traditional espresso machine.
- jonathankoren 8y agoIt's not even a traditional vending machine. It's three super automatic espresso machines, hooked up to probably an arduino or something. A 1970s coffee vending machine would be cheaper.
- aerophilic 8y agoJust to add in, the lowest priced “industrial” arm projected prior to this was the “Franks” robot, where they anticipated to sell them at quantity for about $10k. Note the current development version of that arm is at least 2X that price.
- monkmartinez 8y agoThis isn't "industrial"... "During a 7 unit fabrication run in-house, Bill of Materials (BoM) cost for each arm was tracked at $3328 as shown in Table II. Plastics were printed on Markforged Onyx One and Monoprice MP Select Mini 3D printers. About 75% of our prototype costs were motors and driver boards."
- pauljurczak 8y agoNo it's not. Try to find another 7 DOF arm with 2 kg payload and similar envelope for less than $5K.
- leoedin 8y agoThe startup I work at (Automata) is selling a robot arm for £5k ($6.5k). Getting the price that low took a lot of work and there's definitely mechanical tradeoffs to get there. Robot arms are pretty complicated electromechanical devices with high torque requirements. I suspect one day the manufacture of them will follow a similar path to cars, but until then building them cheaply will be hard. The volumes just aren't high enough yet.
- contingencies 8y agoThere are a ton of industrial robot arms available in China in the last few years. Examples: https://item.taobao.com/item.htm?id=572669195615 https://item.taobao.com/item.htm?id=572669195615 @ USD$3550, https://item.taobao.com/item.htm?id=588690121022 https://item.taobao.com/item.htm?id=588690121022 @ USD$3850, https://item.taobao.com/item.htm?id=572700770567 https://item.taobao.com/item.htm?id=572700770567 @ USD$4100, https://item.taobao.com/item.htm?id=589952267004 https://item.taobao.com/item.htm?id=589952267004 @ USD$4251, https://item.taobao.com/item.htm?id=582638257935 https://item.taobao.com/item.htm?id=582638257935 @ USD$10000, etc. Some advertise using imported SMC (Japanese) pneumatic/hydraulic mechanisms. This may not be unrelated to the fact that you can buy a fully detailed product model like https://item.taobao.com/item.htm?526498275889 https://item.taobao.com/item.htm?526498275889 or https://item.taobao.com/item.htm?id=571064427455 https://item.taobao.com/item.htm?id=571064427455 for USD$0.30+.
- amelius 8y agoThere is one important difference: article's robot is human-safe.
- contingencies 8y agoSure but simple presence / proximity type sensors are cheap. As are cameras. Human-safe is then basically a software feature. IMHO the whole 'cobot' media fad and deployments with humans are needlessly complex versus just handing over between dedicated human-only and robot-only motion envelopes. In industrial or small-scale automation settings, useful for a subset of tasks at best. For these special cobot cases, why not use a retrofit kit for third party arms? It makes more sense as would be more loosely coupled with inevitable hardware evolution and provenance. Hell, it'd even work with arbitrary industrial gear. Talk about a large retrofit market. Software people: that's a valid (and high fad-factor!) startup idea. Get some VC and go get 'em.
- pauljurczak 8y agoIt may work for Chinese buyers, but it's a tough sell outside of China. What about manuals, software, tech support?
- monkmartinez 8y agoExactly... There are a lot of open source robot arms on thingiverse and youtube. Some of them are $100 dollar proof of concepts with basic RC servos [1] to full blown awesomeness like the BCN arm [2] with many flavors in between. It would be super cool to get the prices of the control boards down, standardize the software stacks that run these things, and really integrate them into everyday life. For now, I suppose we have to watch a group of people reinvent the ARM every few months. [1]http://www.eezyrobots.it/eba_mk2.html http://www.eezyrobots.it/eba_mk2.html [2] https://www.bcn3dtechnologies.com/en/bcn3d-moveo-the-future-of-learning/ https://www.bcn3dtechnologies.com/en/bcn3d-moveo-the-future-...
- TaylorAlexander 8y agoLooks like some great hardware! I love the simple joint design and the variable impedance. I hope sales are successful and this venture is able to perpetuate itself!
- Animats 8y agoYes. The drone and drone camera industry has made 3-phase brushless DC servomotors with position encoders into consumer products. This robot uses camera gimbal motors. Most previous robots in this size range used either more expensive industrial motors or variations on R/C servos like the Dynamixel. There are many Dynamixel based robots. It's basically an R/C servo with an encoder and a useful communications protocol. It's a fast motor with a lot of gear reduction, not very back-driveable, certainly not enough for force feedback. Typical pricing is in the $1000-$2000 range. The tier below that is robot arms with regular PWM R/C servos. I have a UArm like that on my desk. Repeatability is about 5mm. Costs a few hundred dollars. Not back-driveable at all. Servomotors and motor controllers used to be incredibly expensive for what they do. Over $1000 for a motor controller was not unusual. The actuation end of robotics is getting cheaper, at last.
- fest 8y agoMotors from hobby market with custom controllers + belt reduction instead of precision strain wave gearboxes seem to be major cost-reducers. Less precision, but lower cost. More than good enough for perception and control research on how to perform everyday chores.
- Animats 8y agoWhat makes this work is that the better hobby motors for drones are now pretty good. Hobby motors used to be cheap sheet metal junk.
- TaylorAlexander 8y ago(Brushless) Hobby motors are typically CNC's aluminum and steel these days. Some sheet metal ones exist too. High quality closed loop controllers shipping in volumes helps too. The cheap motor factories can make higher quality motors upon request too so "hobby like" motors can be great in robotics if a big buyer sources them right.
- aerophilic 8y agoAbstract— Robots must cost less and be force-controlled to enable widespread, safe deployment in unconstrained human environments. We propose Quasi-Direct Drive actuation as a capable paradigm for robotic force-controlled manipulation in human environments at low-cost. Our prototype - Blue - is a human scale 7 Degree of Freedom arm with 2kg payload. Blue can cost less than $5000. We show that Blue has dynamic properties that meet or exceed the needs of human operators: the robot has a nominal position-control bandwidth of 7.5Hz and repeatability within 4mm. We demonstrate a Virtual Reality based interface that can be used as a method for telepresence and collecting robot training demonstrations. Manufacturability, scaling, and potential use-cases for the Blue system are also addressed. Videos and additional information can be found online at berkeleyopenarms.github.io.
- msadowski 8y agoVery, interesting project! I found it so inspiring that I included it in the Weekly Robotics #34 that is live since 30s ago (https://weeklyrobotics.com/weekly-robotics-34 https://weeklyrobotics.com/weekly-robotics-34). For anyone interested here is a link to the paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/1904.03815 https://arxiv.org/abs/1904.03815 . Having robotic arms for <$5k would be great for research, hobbyist and applications not requiring crazy accuracy. I don't have hard data at hand but I doubt that at present you can find commercially available robot with similar characteristics for less than $15k. Another thing that's happening here and I really enjoy is how BLDC motors are being used in applications like these. The reason I like it so much is because hopefully there will be a market for cheap actuators that will do the job well enough to be used for some applications. I'm pretty sure that among other things I've seen a lot of BLDC based actuators on quadruped robots.
- mtw 8y agoAre there any "hobbyists" who can afford a robot arm at $5k?
- lnsru 8y agoThere are already quality German robot kits for 5k: https://de.rs-online.com/mobile/p/roboterarm-montagekits/1765631/ https://de.rs-online.com/mobile/p/roboterarm-montagekits/176...
- pauljurczak 8y agoThe specs are much lower - you get only 5DOF for $5,600, instead of 7DOF. Igus is working on their ReBeL arm, which may be a more competitive option.
- nmca 8y agoIs there a MuJoCo model?
- agumonkey 8y agoWill robotics be 2050s version of 1950s kitchen appliances ?
- harperlee 8y agoAwesome. But I think the real revolution in robotics is when tact can be built in throughout the arm. Feeling force feedback in each joint is one part of the equation; but tact is the way that subtle manipulation, precise feedback and deep environment status understanding will close the gap with human manipulation.
- amelius 8y agoIn the video, the robot is remotely controlled. How long will it take until reinforcement learning / ML can do these things automatically?
- ingend88 8y agoAre there any DIY robotic arms that you would recommend below $1000 ?
- syntaxing 8y agoDepends on your payload and complexity of what you want. There are a couple of design on Thingiverse that uses hobbyist RC servos. The total cost should be less than $100.
- ingend88 8y agoCan you point me to them ?
- syntaxing 8y agoThey can range expensive to around $200 [1] that is like Universal Robotics clone to really cheap using hobby servo that cost less than $30 [2] [1]https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3327968 https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3327968 [2] https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:360108 https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:360108
- ingend88 8y agoAre there any prebuilt ones?
- syntaxing 8y agoYeah, they're a couple you can buy online [1]. Dobot came out one that looked nice and the mechanical spec sounds pretty decent [2]. But I hear the software is shitty so YMMV. They recently came out with an Arduino "AI" library so not sure if that's easier to program. If you want to go cheaper, Lynxmotion is the next one on the list. If you want to go super cheap, the LittleArm series is the way to go. I remember following them on Kickstarter and the owner (it's like a two man team) released a GUI that looked useful. It's coded in Processing which allows you to record the arm movement and playback. [1] https://www.robotshop.com/en/robotic-arms.html https://www.robotshop.com/en/robotic-arms.html [2] https://www.dobot.cc/dobot-magician/product-overview.html https://www.dobot.cc/dobot-magician/product-overview.html
- ilaksh 8y agoBerkely also has some interesting research on embodied AI. My belief about robotics is that we need really efficient and powerful artificial muscles and closer biomimicry. It seems like the way real limbs operate with leverage will be an advantage if we can get useful muscles.