ROS sucks, good move. Too complicated
That was my take 8 years ago glad to hear it’s still that
Building a robotics research setup that lives next to my desk
21–30 of 64 posts
Re: Building a robotics research setup that lives next to my desk
#22Cool stuff. At my previous (startup / research) job I had to set up similar system (but with franka arm and multi view camera) alone because I was the only one with robotics background. >I do not intend to calibrate the camera’s extrinsics or intrinsics for now. Sensible choice, although I suggest it's good in the long run to do at early stage in your setup, especially if you intend to collect data for policy learnin…
Great points and I very much appreciate the input!
Right now the static camera is probably really bad: It's mounted on my desk, so its very easy to bump into it and move it. So yeah, it's position for sure will change over time. I think I need a better solution, maybe a rail system that's more rigidly attached to the robot arm so that at least the camera stays fixed relative to that point of reference.
Re: Building a robotics research setup that lives next to my desk
#23Love this, I’m playing around with the cheapo esp32+servos version of this, super fun. Something I’m working on is a hardware CLI for agents to run experiments, with a “CICD” pipeline that validates everything and means I can delegate more of the experiments to the agents. I wonder if you have any thoughts on this? The idea is to allow the coding agent to run the full loop of experiments and validations, with vision,…
Very cool!
Have you seen the recent nvidia thing? They do this at scale for robotics manipulation: https://research.nvidia.com/labs/gear/enpire/
Re: Building a robotics research setup that lives next to my desk
#24Very interesting article. I'm looking to get my first robot arm soon-ish, probably something in the SO-101 category.
Can someone get reasonably far using recorded sessions compared to training in a simulated environment¹?
Do you have any experience with third-party or DIY attachments for robot arms? I assume it's going to be more difficult for something like the Ufactory arm vs. the open models.
Re: Building a robotics research setup that lives next to my desk
#25Ah nice I've tinkered a bit with robotics few years ago, e.g. https://twitter-archive.benetou.fr/utopiah/status/1760260544... and it's pretty empowering... but also showcases how amazing the human body is. Our dexterity, ability to sense, etc.
Reminds me of https://rodneybrooks.com/why-todays-humanoids-wont-learn-dex... which is basically a stark warning against the hype.
Re: Building a robotics research setup that lives next to my desk
#26Ah nice I've tinkered a bit with robotics few years ago, e.g. https://twitter-archive.benetou.fr/utopiah/status/1760260544... and it's pretty empowering... but also showcases how amazing the human body is. Our dexterity, ability to sense, etc. Reminds me of https://rodneybrooks.com/why-todays-humanoids-wont-learn-dex... which is basically a stark warning against the hype.
Cool video! What made you stop if I can ask?
And yeah I feel you re humanoid. I worked on the Rubik's cube project at OpenAI, which used a humanoid hand, and it was insanely painful and hard. Also fun anecdote: it was completely impossible to teleop the shadow hand. We had a data glove to capture hand movements but as soon as contact / haptics come in, you're lost. We could never even get a single rotation on the Rubik's cube via teleop.
I do think simpler hardware like the one described in my post works really though and it's so much easier to do something with it.
Re: Building a robotics research setup that lives next to my desk
#27Very interesting article. I'm looking to get my first robot arm soon-ish, probably something in the SO-101 category. Can someone get reasonably far using recorded sessions compared to training in a simulated environment¹? Do you have any experience with third-party or DIY attachments for robot arms? I assume it's going to be more difficult for something like the Ufactory arm vs. the open models. ¹ https://blog.comma.…
I'm only starting down this road but my sense is that ACT and Diffusion Policy both make it pretty feasible to start on real data only. LeRobot also makes it easier to train these. But that's the next step that I'm working on, so I don't know yet.
On attachments: during this project I really wanted a 3D printer several times. So that's probably next on the shopping list.
The Ufactory arm is actually quite extensible: it exposes digital input/output and you have a standard wrist mount where you can mount different end effectors or attachments.
Re: Building a robotics research setup that lives next to my desk
#28Nice, I will be following your posts! I just bought a robot arm myself, the seeed studio B601DM (€1500 6+1 axis), it works great and is open source hardware as well and a bit more solid then the so101. I also opted to not use ros, I don't want to give up control by putting another framework in between. Is your plan to see whats possible right now or do you also have ideas on how to improve sota?
Re: Building a robotics research setup that lives next to my desk
#29Love this, I’m playing around with the cheapo esp32+servos version of this, super fun. Something I’m working on is a hardware CLI for agents to run experiments, with a “CICD” pipeline that validates everything and means I can delegate more of the experiments to the agents. I wonder if you have any thoughts on this? The idea is to allow the coding agent to run the full loop of experiments and validations, with vision,…
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Re: Building a robotics research setup that lives next to my desk
#30I had a very similar setup. Really happy with the xarm 6 lite. I played around with the diffusion policy paper experiments and was thinking to buy a webcam as a top camera as well but I ended up buying two intel realsense ones because of the timestamp drift issues. How did you solve that? Or is camera feed syncing not necessary for your intended projects?