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One-Armed UBR-1 Points the Way To Cheaper Robots
waderoush writes "One of the problems that kept PR2, a two-armed humanoid robot developed by Menlo Park, CA-based Willow Garage, from succeeding commercially was its $400,000 price tag. But as it turned out, only a handful of the 40 or so universities that own PR2s ever developed applications that use both arms. That's one of the reasons why UBR-1, a mobile manipulator robot from Willow Garage spinoff Unbounded Robotics, has only one arm. And that, along with many other engineering decisions and technology improvements, will allow the startup to sell its robot for just $35,000 (it's designed for materials-handling tasks in places like warehouses, elder care facilities, and supermarkets). 'With robots, feature creep is so much more present than in some other fields,' says Unbounded co-founder and CEO Melonee Wise. 'There is always this desire to make a Swiss Army knife. But you have to make compromises, and those compromises directly impact the capabilities as well as the cost of the robot.' One roboticist told Unbounded: 'Your robot is so inexpensive that if I needed to have a second arm, I'd just buy a second robot.'"
Now I can start my Robot Def Leppard!
Before I realized the significance of the hyphen, my brain briefly parsed that sentence like "An armed UBR-1..."
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They think removing one arm to reduce costs is a compromise?
They should speak to the engineering team who conceived the fleshlight.
When asked for a comment, the robot replied "'tis but a scratch"
They could save even more by replacing the arm with a plunger. And binocular vision is overrated, just have one eye on a swinging stalk.
What could possibly go wrong?
Lose = not win
One-Armed UBR-1 Points the Way To Cheaper Robots
Good thing it still has it's pointing arm!
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
At this rate, robots priced for normal people will only be able to give you the finger, just one finger, because that's all they'll have.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
'Your robot is so inexpensive that if I needed to have a second arm, I'd just buy a second robot
A single robot that can control two arms is very different from two separate robots that each have a single arm.
A proper statistical analysis should have revealed long ago that a one-armed robot is more than adequate for at least 95% of grad students running masturbatorial subroutines.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
"'There is always this desire to make a Swiss Army knife"
Like this guy?
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...now it's just an arm and a leg.
$400,000 for two arms down to only $35,000 for one?
That second arm must have had ``Kung-Fu Grip''.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
can still fap
Did you not see what happened to Wolowitz?
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Only needs to waive one arm to keep kids off lawn.
They already waived one arm; that's why they've only got one now....
So...
If I purchase two UBR-1s at $35,000 a piece I can build a two arm robot for $70,000? I'm mean we're only talking a new roll of duct tape at this point.
What happened to the rest of the unobtanium $400,000 price tag?
Is this the new math the kids keep talking about? What am I missing here?
They switched to cheap commodity parts for the sensors instead of custom building all the parts. That's the big cost savings.
Seems cool, but it can't lift very much (about 3 pounds).
Quimby's Usiform Robots, from the short story "Q.U.R." by Anthony Boucher.
There is always this desire to make a Swiss Army knife. But you have to make compromises, and those compromises directly impact the capabilities as well as the cost of the robot.
...and the logical conclusion of that is to design the robot to do one specific task and it will do that task very well at minimal cost.
We already have things like that. We call them machines. While these "robot manufacturers" a.k.a. kids with too much money on their hands who want to pretend like they're investing it while they waste it away building cool toys... Anyway, while they like to sit around and imagine their robots that can lift a whole 3 pounds and move it at a mind-boggling 10 cm/s will find thousands of uses, I'd be a lot more impressed if they could give even one real-life example where employing their robots saves a company money and does so in a way where it isn't possible to save much more money simply by hiring workers or using a custom-built machine.
If a custom-built machine can handle those 3 pound objects a thousand times faster, then employing a thousand of those robots to do the same amount of productive work isn't a wise business decision, even if you can still be profitable, as that machine is probably going to cost you far less than $35 million. So using the robots has to not simply be profitable, but has to be at least in the ballpark of how profitable other methods are.
Can it make the sound of one robot hand clapping?
I've heard of those mechanical one-armed bandits!
I've long wanted something like this, a telepresence bot with a camera, an arm, a few tools in reach, and a supply of cables for use in telco data centers. No more calling remote hands or trudging over to equinix, just sign out a robot, steer it to the cage, do the troubleshooting, then send it back. Sadly, I doubt it'll ever happen, the temptation of engineers to sign out robots and running jousting competitions in the aisles would just be too tempting.
The Fugitive would have been very different.
Pretty soon they can do the mining, foundry work, assemble and tune themselves.
So when you're in the front line of that riot of 8 billion people protesting lost jobs because of robots... just remember robots don't care =)
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
A one armed robot for elder care facilities? They are really gearing up for the retiring /. crowd aren't they. I don't blame them. I don't want to touch it either.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.