Hacker News Reader

Comment by mrfusion | Hacker News Reader

I’d love to work on the AI side of this. Are there any good arms I can buy for not too expensive and start trying out ideas?

Could I really have a pick_up_object() start up? There’s actually demand for that?

View on HN

Regarding a startup, there is quite a demand in manufacturing. I hear investors will throw money at projects that promise such things, but there isn't much scope for "real" AI as such.

"Picking" in manufacturing is a well studied and basically well solved problem. It only becomes challenging when generic solutions are required: "pick up this bowling ball or this egg or this living chicken or this living plant with the same system, while maintaining a high speed and constrained motion envelope".

Probably more in logistics space, e.g. for retailer warehouses with many different products.

As for pick_up_object() startups, there are:

- https://picknik.ai/

- https://covariant.ai/

- https://www.righthandrobotics.com/

- https://lyro.io/

- https://www.universallogic.com/

and probably others.

I would suggest picking up a small, cheap arm first. There are a few you can control via Arduino. Look at one with an MG958 15kg metal gear servo you can already pick up some small objects.

One you go to a large, heavy arm you need more powerful and precise motors, and the cost of mistakes dramatically increases (monetarily and physical damage).

The TinkerKit Braccio robotic arm seems a reasonable entry point.

https://store.arduino.cc/usa/tinkerkit-braccio

Reply on news.ycombinator.com