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Comment by isawczuk | Hacker News Reader

Is there DIY guide to build similar robot?

$19k - https://hello-robot.com/ is a bit steep.

1. They have very detailed guides on the hardware here [0], which should tell you a lot of information you may need to know.

2. However, I think a large part of the price tag is really the cost of R&D, and once this gets out of prototype stage and goes into mass production price is bound to come down a lot. Compared to a lot of other robots, $20K is much cheaper. For example, compare Boston Dynamic's robot dog, Spot, which is around $200K iirc.

3. But that's also why we need more projects like Dobb-E on these robots! Without the right "apps" home robots will never catch on properly to get to the point of mass-production.

[0] https://docs.hello-robot.com/0.2/stretch-hardware-guides/doc...

Do you think this could be adapted to smaller robot like this Pi-based XGO CM4[0]

I know they have different hardware but the end result is quite similar: a mobile robot with an articulated grabber. And seeing your prototype made me think of the robot dog.

[0] https://shop.elecfreaks.com/products/elecfreaks-cm4-xgo-robo...

Smaller robots are unfortunately limited in how much force/torque they can apply and how high they can reach, two factors that we found can severely limit the applicability of a home robot. As a result, unfortunately, we don't have much plans for extending to a smaller robot at this moment.

However, all of our designs are open source! So if you or someone else is interested, it could be a fun weekend project to design a "Stick" equivalent data collection tool for the XGO CM4. I would love to see how that turns out.

Compute on theirs is an Intel Nuc 8 (probably explains a decent part of the price). Appreciate the link to the more "hobbyist friendly" device you mentioned. I am thinking it might do well as a platform for light dusting around the house and other things to supplement a Robovac.

how does a 300-600$ PC explain a decent part of a 20000$ robot?

Not that it changes your point, but Spot is $75k.

There's a knockoff for $23k though, so hopefully this one for $20 makes competitors available for cheaper.

https://robostore.com/products/unitree-go1-edu-plus-3d-lidar

I'm sorry, should have been clearer. The Spot robot with a manipulator arm (which has been used in some home projects before, see [0]) I believe totals up to about $200K. The base robot is $75K, which is what you linked to. I mentioned that figure because that seemed more relevant.

[0] https://adaptiveskillcoordination.github.io/

this is really awesome. $20k is just too high for a toy, but I'm reading through this to see if there's a way to get this to $2k

I know everyone here mostly knows this, but in LCoL areas (South Africa for me specifically), that $20K almost buys you an entire house that you can live in in near-perpetuity. Not only that, but I could hire low-skilled labor for 7200 hours for the same cost. Just thought I'd add a bit of 3rd-world perspective to the discussion.

It's slightly more than a Nao:

https://www.robotlab.com/store/robotlab-nao-school-starter-p...

Which has hilarious design issues like microphones and CPU both in the head, so they pick up fan noise and if you tell it to extend its hands forward it's going to eventually collapse - apparently to prevent the motors from overheating.

It says right there its affordable though!

That’s an order of magnitude less than a PR2 was.

ABB Dual YuMi is 70k, so 14k is relllatively affordable. Robot parts are wicked expensive and bills rack up fast.

shockingly expensive

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