5 ms·
Rod Brooks Reveals Baxter, Programmable Industrial Robot for the Masses
- beambot 14y agoAs a professional roboticist, this is really exciting. It could have an even bigger impact that the Kinect (and other depth sensors). For the last few decades, actuators have been the dominant cost of building such a robot. Comparable arms routinely cost ~$100k (from the PR2, Meka, ABB, Barrett, Kuka, etc). Essentially, Baxter represents a 10x cost savings, taking the per-arm cost from ~$100k to ~$10k each. Actually... Rod is my "academic grandfather." Yesterday I had the opportunity to interview him for Hizook's feature article: http://www.hizook.com/blog/2012/09/18/baxter-robot-rethink-robotics-finally-unveiled http://www.hizook.com/blog/2012/09/18/baxter-robot-rethink-r... So much for yesterday's HN frontpage article about hardware being dead...
- tocomment 14y agoI've been curious lately about how robotic arms are designed and built. Do you have any beginner resources you could point me to?
- hpguy 14y agoDon't want to nitpick, but the article says "Baxter will sell for $22,000, not including its base and hands, but including a software subscription and warranty." So not really a 10x cost saving.
- tocomment 14y agoWow that's really cool. How far away are we from having one of these do dishes?
- unwind 14y agoOptimized high-performance robots for washing dishes, adapted to the consumer environment, have been available for almost a century. They're called, quite aptly, dishwashers.
- JoeAltmaier 14y agoOk, when will it load and unload the dishes?
- tocomment 14y agoRight, and for a bonus "hand" wash things that don't fit in the dishwasher.
- moconnor 14y agoGet two dishwashers and put your clean dishes in one of them. Put a sticker on it marked "clean". Need a plate? Take it out of the "clean" dishwasher. Got a dirty plate? Put it into the other dishwasher. Other dishwasher full? Turn it on and move the "clean" sticker to that one. Double buffering with dishwashers turns them into magic cupboards. I don't know why most kitchens only come with one.
- tocomment 14y agoIt sounds good but I wonder how it would work in practice? What if you have a lot of guests over and use more dishes than usual? What about items that you don't use fast enough? They'd stay left in the clean machine and you'd have to manually put them away before it turns into a "dirty" machine. Maybe you really need more than 2 machines?
- debacle 14y agoBecause if you have a family of four, all of your dishes wont fit in the dishwasher.
- mkl 14y agoDouble buffering with dishwashers turns them into magic cupboards. I don't know why most kitchens only come with one. One is enough if it's a Fisher & Paykel DishDrawer. Two independent dishwashers in one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drawer_dishwasher http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drawer_dishwasher For storing things it probably wouldn't be big enough for more than a couple of people though. Also, magnet is better than sticker.
- oilytheotter 14y agoIt would be great for consumers if these came with an app store where you could buy programs to do different tasks around the house (wash dishes, cook a specific meal, etc). If it was useful enough, it's not crazy to think that a family would spend 20k on one (same cost as a car).
- drcube 14y agoAnd a lot cheaper than a maid.
- b_emery 14y agoYes, or folding and putting away laundry. The bane of modern existence! I'll take a hack for that if you've got one.
- tocomment 14y agoDoes anyone know how the arms are designed? Do they just have big servos?
- agumonkey 14y agoThe reverse sensor programming reminds me of cg animation auto-keyframing.
- ZoFreX 14y agoYes, it is presumably doing some inverse kinematics in there somewhere. I wonder how they stabilised it.
- ZoFreX 14y agoUnrelated to the content but if you do insist on chunking your articles up into pages, at least break them at paragraph boundaries! Or even sentence boundaries - breaking them mid-sentence is atrocious.
- tmuir 14y agoThe $22K price is for an incomplete system. The two missing pieces (hands and base) sound pretty integral to the system as well. What is the point of listing a price of a useless configuration?
- jotux 14y agoThe arm itself is just the platform you build on to implement the end device. The hand and base are specific to the application.
- francoisferland 14y agoEnd effectors depends on the task, many are already available on the market. Some applications might not even require an active end effector at all. Same thing with the platform. Research labs who want to explore user interaction with safe, compliant arms without designing their own now have a much cheaper option that before.
- raintrees 14y agoSingle page: http://www.xconomy.com/boston/2012/09/18/rod-brooks-and-rethink-reveal-an-industrial-robot-for-the-masses/?single_page=true http://www.xconomy.com/boston/2012/09/18/rod-brooks-and-reth...
- fluxon 14y agoMissed opportunity: name it Dexter.