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PyRobot
- acbart 7y agoLooking over the robots they support, low cost means about "thousands of dollars" in this context, right?
- ampdepolymerase 7y agoThe expensive bits are mainly the arms. Strictly speaking there is nothing stopping you from running it on one of those sub-hundred bots from AliExpress.
- ssivark 7y agoYeah, it's currently ~5k USD for a (pre-assembled) robot arm that is marginally "useful" (and there are several brands/makers at that price point). I've heard of some that are trying to push towards the ~3k price point, with somewhat poorer tolerances. I'm excited for the time in the near future when a useful robot arm costs roughly as much as a good laptop i.e. ~1k USD. At that point, it'll become feasible for hobbyists to get one each and start playing around. Which will lead to an explosion in the variety of things tried, and will positively feed back into creating a healthy community, tons of software which makes it easier for the next set of people to get involved, etc. Much like the PC revolution in the 80s/90s. At the moment, they're kinda like overpriced toys (for a home user / enthusiast point of view) without a killer app.
- OnlineGladiator 7y ago> I'm excited for the time in the near future when a useful robot arm costs roughly as much as a good laptop i.e. ~1k USD. I feel like people have been saying this is the "near future" for 20 years now.
- kortex 7y agoWe need a breakthrough in low-speed, high torque, lightweight motors and geardowns. Basically if we can get economies of scale up on BLDC motors with higher numbers of poles (think hoverboard motors but lighter), and figure out how to mass manufacture harmonic drives, that'll open up the door to all kinds of low cost robotics. Odriverobotics already has brought down the barrier to BLDC servomotor control. Or this thing: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8613852 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8613852
- craftinator 7y agoTwo thoughts: 1) I haven't seen any clear literature on efficiency of affordable servos. It seems like existing technology must be very efficient, given the pretty uniform torque/power ratio I've seen across the servo market. 2) One of the biggest financial roadblocks I've run across in robotics isn't about the torque available in affordable servos, it's about the ability to get force feedback. Servos/motors are useless for the large set of tasks requiring force feedback, without the additional complexity of building a current sensor and calibrating it. We need a cheap servo with integrated force feedback and an easy means of autocalibration (from a quick search, seems like this feature usually doubles or tripples the cost of an identical servo).
- kortex 7y agoTorque/efficiency is still a big issue. A coworker and I put together all the math and specs for a robot which could "cook breakfast", just to see what a PoC would take. For anything approaching human arm levels of strength, in that form factor, you are looking at SWG servos. These are nominally 70-80% efficient, but that drops after a few thousand cycles, if you operate in higher loading regimes [1]. so cooling/maintenance is super important. Planetary gears are also not great efficiency-wise and are heavier. Force feedback is also super important and challenging. We just need like, synthetic actin :) Disney is actually working on that [2]. yeah it looks super inefficient but so were vacuum tubes before transistors. 1] https://eeepitnl.tksc.jaxa.jp/mews/EN/19th/text/206.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwiHkd2B57HnAhVZaM0KHU_xAKUQFjAPegQIAxAF&usg=AOvVaw2F4XHlavPrQQiyKJMZSuwt https://eeepitnl.tksc.jaxa.jp/mews/EN/19th/text/206.pdf&ved=... 2] https://studios.disneyresearch.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/High-Performance-Robotic-Muscles-from-Conductive-Nylon-Sewing-Thread-Paper.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwjG-oCP6bHnAhXBHM0KHeT7B4YQFjAZegQIBhAF&usg=AOvVaw1T86dwb46W3evrawujoK5n https://studios.disneyresearch.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/0...
- craftinator 7y agoInteresting! Thank you for all the great information. I'm opening those links from a mobile app, and both ended up as not found (not 404, but as the sites internal unrecognized URL page). Are they live for you?
- incongruity 7y agoThat progression mirrors many others - but more recently, it makes me think of 3D printing and related making technologies like laser cutters and CNC mills. Good 3D printers can now be had for under 1k USD – and if you can tolerate some tinkering and modifications $300-$500 can get you decent results as well.
- bdcravens 7y agoThere's a version of the TurtleBot kit with an arm for under $3k https://www.trossenrobotics.com/interbotix-turtlebot-2i-mobile-ros-platform.aspx https://www.trossenrobotics.com/interbotix-turtlebot-2i-mobi... The arms themselves appears to be in the 400-600 range
- numpad0 7y agoIs there any use to servo based arms other than to let students discover the word “IK”
- ecmascript 7y agoCool, but the main problem I have is that I don't have a robot to program and the complexity to build one is way too high for me.
- dbcurtis 7y agoAWS Robomaker gives you simulated Gazebo environments to play with. It aims to be an industrial-strength CI/CD environment for PR testing in simulation before deploying to hardware (where bugs can have kinetic consequences) so it is reasonably featureful. (Not affiliated, just have friends that work there)
- joshvm 7y agoThis is built on ROS by the looks of it. Most robotics users run everything in simulations anyway (have a look at UR arms). At a basic level look at Turtlebot. You can add all sorts of sensors, simulate environments and even realistic physics. Even with things like pre-defined movement areas and collision boxes, arm planning software sometimes completely freaks out and produces weird plans that would probably break things. So it's always good to visualise before sending the commands to the physical system. Gazebo is a common environment: https://community.arm.com/developer/research/b/articles/posts/do-you-want-to-build-a-robot https://community.arm.com/developer/research/b/articles/post...
- eismcc 7y agoThank you! I didn’t realize it was that common. Seems very useful for building robot AI without needing to keep your robot safe In the process.
- gjkood 7y agoI used to coach a FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) Team for my son's high school. The main Robotics competition for middle/high schools are based on the FTC Pitsco TETRIX, FRC AndyMark, VEX Robotics Platforms. You can find the majority of hardware and electronics you need for basic robotics from the following sites: https://www.pitsco.com/ https://www.pitsco.com/ https://www.vexrobotics.com/ https://www.vexrobotics.com/ https://www.andymark.com/ https://www.andymark.com/ http://www.revrobotics.com/ http://www.revrobotics.com/ https://www.servocity.com/actobotics https://www.servocity.com/actobotics The high costs come into play when you have to deal with high precision servos with high torque. The Trossen Robotics site gives you an example of high precision servos and pricing. https://www.trossenrobotics.com/ https://www.trossenrobotics.com/ You can find cheaper robotics options at the following site https://www.robotshop.com/ https://www.robotshop.com/ When you run a team you start with a budget in the low Ks and build out the equipment inventory over several years. There is high attrition in many of the electronic parts (Servos, Controllers, Sensors) when you compete. Building basic robots is not complex. Basic navigation using techniques such as dead reconing, etc are not complicated. What is complex is advanced software techniques for navigation, motion planning, etc which rely on some complex math. Have Fun!
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- Adaptive 7y agoReaders of this thread may be interested in lower cost options. I built a middle school robotics curriculum around Dexter GoPiGo robots: https://www.dexterindustries.com/gopigo3/ https://www.dexterindustries.com/gopigo3/ While you can do visual/block based coding on these, it also has built in Python support and the whole curriculum I ran was Python based. My criteria for selection of this platform included: - support for Grove sensors - flexibility in machining own parts if desired - Python support - rPi based (no affiliation with this company, just a positive real world end-user/educator experience)
- DrNuke 7y agoMore cash in advance spares the time needed for mechanics, mechatronics & software DIY hassle... which on the other hand are the most formative activities to learn robotics for real.
- mrfusion 7y agoIs this an alternative to ros?
- beisner 7y agoIt’s built on top of ROS
- mrfusion 7y agoHow much does it cost to build the locobot?
- Wavelets 7y agoMan, another (potential) foundational AI/ML/Robotics library from Facebook. At some point every major open source library in this field is going to be run out of a FAANG company. I wonder what the impact of this will be in the long run.
- SCUSKU 7y agoOne impact is that a $5,000 robot is labeled as a "a low cost" robot.
- agentx3r 7y agoFoundational seems like a strong word here - this is a thin wrapper on top of two popular components from ROS (Navigation and MoveIt), and bringup for a specific robot (LoCoBot). I appreciate the effort here though - ROS feels like it's become harder to use due to stale documentation, and there's value in providing a simple python API that abstracts the underlying bringup. However looking through the wrapper and its documentation, it doesn't feel like it's making it much simpler by hiding away standard ROS tools.
- andreyk 7y agoYeah, as a robotics + ML researcher at Stanford I can confirm I've looked over this and was not that impressed; our own lab already has a version of this, as do most robotics lab. It's nice that it's open source but it's not that feature-rich.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- pollinia 7y agoroothold
- qubex 7y agoAm I the only one who associates the name ‘Pyrobot’ with the idea of an autonomous flame-launcher?
- anentropic 7y agoanyone else wonder/worry what Facebook wants to do with robots...?