I agree that using a Kinect is probably a good early approach. 3D CV certainly isn't easy. If I were developing a product though I'd want to be careful about

I agree that using a Kinect is probably a good early approach. 3D CV certainly isn't easy. If I were developing a product though I'd want to be careful about being dependent on one company's technology. I'm not sure how easy it would be to replicate a Kinect like device (whether for legal or technical reasons) and my impression is that high speed laser scanners are very expensive. If you'd like to continue this discussion my e-mail address is in my HN profile. I too am very interested in developing a robotics product. One of the things I'm really trying to understand is what exactly makes these arms so expensive and what, if anything can be done about it. You mentioned motors and controllers. I wonder which one drives the cost. With motors the problem might be materials and manufacturing cost, if its the controllers then I think the cost would be more in non-recurrent engineering (because electronics manufacturing usually isn't very expensive) and that can be minimized if you have a large market.