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Low Cost Robot Arm

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Re: Low Cost Robot Arm

#41

Post by fragmede »

MaxikCZ wrote: post #17

I want the arm to wander around my house, pick up articles of loose clothing and put them into washing machine. Then pull them out and spread them on a drying hanger. How far away from that are we?

That's it, isn't it. The question is not, how far away from that are we, but when can you and I actually afford it? Because, as the other commenter snarkily replies, human maids already exist. The lifestyle of the singularity is already here for the rich. It's trickling down that kind of lifestyle to the rest of us that AI robots will enable. (with some amount of social upheaval.)

Lets say the robot that can do that comes out next year for $15 million. Could you afford one? I certainly can't. So pretend that it does, what changes for you and I? Nothing. So the robots that can do that won't be used as robot maids until the price comes down. Which; it will. Open source robotics and model-available AI will force things to be affordable sooner, rather than later, because we'd all like a robot to do that for us. Along with be in the kitchen, doing dishes, cleaning up; cleaning the bathroom, doing yardwork, making my bed.

The industrial versions will be used to do hideously dangerous things. underwater welding, chainsaw helicoptering, manual nuclear reactor rod removal. We already use machines for a lot of those difficult/impossible tasks, it's just a matter of programming the robots.

Which takes us back to today. How far away from that are we? The pieces are already here. Between https://ok-robot.github.io/ and https://mobile-aloha.github.io/ the building blocks are here. It's just a matter of time before someone puts the existing pieces together to make said robot, the only question is who will be first to make it, who will be first to open source it. Who will make it not just possible, but affordable?

Re: Low Cost Robot Arm

#42

Post by Animats »

isquaredr wrote: post #12

The geek in me is drooling, but are there any practical home uses others have found for robotic arms? Hacking is always more fun with a good project

Not much. I have a UArm on my desk, which is a lot like this one but with cheaper servos. It was too inaccurate to use for much of anything. I built a force-feedback sensor for it out of a 3D mouse. Reasonable idea, but not stiff enougn for the application.

Re: Low Cost Robot Arm

#43

Post by IshKebab »

greggsy wrote: post #40
isquaredr wrote: post #12

The geek in me is drooling, but are there any practical home uses others have found for robotic arms? Hacking is always more fun with a good project

I’d use it to pick through and sort the massive pile of Lego my children leave behind after an Easter long weekend. Seems trivial to do identification based on the high quality corpus of block databases. Wouldn’t have to be super quick - you could just leave it running overnight. I’m sure someone’s written an interesting paper on the ideal sorting algorithm too (i.e. large things > small things vs. ‘just pick up and…

Picking up and sorting Lego with a robot arm is pretty much a state of the art research project (a few years ago at least), not a hobby project.

Re: Low Cost Robot Arm

#44

Post by IshKebab »

MaxikCZ wrote: post #17

I want the arm to wander around my house, pick up articles of loose clothing and put them into washing machine. Then pull them out and spread them on a drying hanger. How far away from that are we?

Define "we". Professional SotA? Probably like 10 years. Open source? More like 100.

Re: Low Cost Robot Arm

#45

Post by Grimblewald »

IshKebab wrote: post #43
greggsy wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d use it to pick through and sort the massive pile of Lego my children leave behind after an Easter long weekend. Seems trivial to do identification based on the high quality corpus of block databases. Wouldn’t have to be super quick - you could just leave it running overnight. I’m sure someone’s written an interesting paper on the ideal sorting algorithm too (i.e. large things > small things vs. ‘just pick up and…

Picking up and sorting Lego with a robot arm is pretty much a state of the art research project (a few years ago at least), not a hobby project.

Depends on your defenition of hobby and if the hobby as part of it being enjoyable needs to produce something tangible in the short term. Following sota research, tinkering, trying new things in a field unrelated to your day job can be a fullfilling hobby.

Re: Low Cost Robot Arm

#46

Post by TaylorAlexander »

MaxikCZ wrote: post #17

I want the arm to wander around my house, pick up articles of loose clothing and put them into washing machine. Then pull them out and spread them on a drying hanger. How far away from that are we?

Google X was working on that with Everyday Robots (I used to work there) but they canceled the project. One of their old project leaders left and started Hello Robot, which is doing a much better job producing an actually useful thing. I think those robots are maybe $25k, but I’m not actually sure.

Re: Low Cost Robot Arm

#47

Post by TaylorAlexander »

ipsum2 wrote: post #18

Does anyone have any suggestions on something that's a little higher quality, i.e. more torque and larger, like the size of a UR5 but cheaper than $30k? There's always seems to be a gap between "robot arm with dynamixels/off the shelf servos" and "research-grade arms".

I’m very happy with the mechanical design for my four axis brushless motor powered robot arm with integrated 3D printed planetary gearboxes. I have some hope of picking the project back up and better documenting it, though the CAD files explain a lot. For the last few years I’ve been working on my own brushless motor controller design and I think this year I will have that stable enough to go back to working on this arm.

https://github.com/tlalexander/brushless_robot_arm

https://github.com/Twisted-Fields/rp2040-motor-controller

Direct link to a video of it operating (apologies for the Twitter link) here: https://x.com/tlalexander/status/1455339851734138880

Re: Low Cost Robot Arm

#48

Post by cs2818 »

As a longtime Dynamixel user I agree the U2D2 adapter is pricey in comparison to other options, but I would like some quantification of the “latency is very high” claim. I have always found it to be a sure bet for low latency (~1ms) across a wide variety of platforms.

Re: Low Cost Robot Arm

#49

Post by hatthew »

fragmede wrote: post #41
MaxikCZ wrote: post #17

I want the arm to wander around my house, pick up articles of loose clothing and put them into washing machine. Then pull them out and spread them on a drying hanger. How far away from that are we?

That's it, isn't it. The question is not, how far away from that are we , but when can you and I actually afford it? Because, as the other commenter snarkily replies, human maids already exist. The lifestyle of the singularity is already here for the rich. It's trickling down that kind of lifestyle to the rest of us that AI robots will enable. (with some amount of social upheaval.) Lets say the robot that can do that…

I think even more difficult than making it affordable will be making it reliable. OK-Robot says it has has a 1/3 failure rate, and takes ~20x as long as a human, at which point you might as well do the task yourself. I'd want the error rate and speed improved by an order of magnitude before I'd consider it anything other than a fun novelty.

Re: Low Cost Robot Arm

#50

Post by 4gotunameagain »

greggsy wrote: post #40
isquaredr wrote: post #12

The geek in me is drooling, but are there any practical home uses others have found for robotic arms? Hacking is always more fun with a good project

I’d use it to pick through and sort the massive pile of Lego my children leave behind after an Easter long weekend. Seems trivial to do identification based on the high quality corpus of block databases. Wouldn’t have to be super quick - you could just leave it running overnight. I’m sure someone’s written an interesting paper on the ideal sorting algorithm too (i.e. large things > small things vs. ‘just pick up and…

The devil is in the details. In theory everything is trivial with enough SW dev hubris ;)

Even just the path planning towards the block to ensure good grip and pick up is not a simple task. Consider all the block shapes, possible orientations, collisions..

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