23 comments

  • arjie 1 hour ago
    Where are you guys in SF? Would love to come see it. Mostly interested in seeing the speed of action (what multiple is the video replay at, etc.) and looking at center-of-mass etc. issues. I have a pretty straightforward use-case in a home. The Dreame we have in the living room is pretty good at avoiding most obstacles, but I usually have an LLM-based agent review the image automatically and either send out the vacuum or suggest moving things that would foul it up. Works great. Obviously substituting with a humanoid capable of reaching ground height things and picking up children's toys etc. would be great.

    I'd want to bolt it with a mount to the wall when not in use because it needs to be climb-resistant for children during the daytime when I don't need it functional but there is a solid 8 hour 2200->0700 window when no one will be in the living room and speed is not an issue.

    I was talking to my wife about this device and actually the wheeled form factor and (probably) no control software for balance is a feature for our use-case because when the Unitree G1 or whatever falls over the result is catastrophic. The balance control software attempts pure insanity and will likely kill a child nearby.

  • jonplackett 3 hours ago
    Looks cool.

    Can you be up front about its real capabilities. Are these videos of it eg tidying up real or just staged / cherry picked?

    If you let it loose in a messy room or stirring something in a kitchen, what are the genuine results you would expect in the wild?

    We’re all used to seeing things like Atlas back flipping but then can’t do anything in a real environment. Just curious how this fits in and what the success / fail rate is.

    • jdiff 2 hours ago
      That video of it folding clothes would seem to hint at that. It's only able to awkwardly throw it into a pile, but they still included it. It's clearly a very cool project, but it suggests the claimed capabilities are more show than substance.
  • 1234letshaveatw 6 minutes ago
    Its main responsibility will be to stand in my front window and make the JO sign when my neighbor drives by
  • mNovak 1 hour ago
    I'm confused, is this a research device, hobby/tinker item, or consumer product?

    I don't mean to be negative, but making a sustainable business on a hardware race to the bottom sounds challenging.

    I'd be curious to to know from others here, what in-home tasks do people think they'll really be able to automate with any of the various bimanual or humanoid robot platforms that seem to be going around?

    • micromacrofoot 1 hour ago
      Nothing, none of these are good enough to do any home tasks reliably. These are all research/hobbyist devices that won't be interesting for another 5-10 years. Probably a bunch of fun to play around with though.
  • mrnotcrazy 2 hours ago
    My question would be how riffable is it? I don't have 10-20k to drop on a robot. I work for co-ops so while I make good money(90k~ pretty good!) its less than I could make else where but the trade off is I have more time to build random stuff. 2k is the price point for me where I might buy a big thing every so many years, teaching this to play board games, making new hands for it, teaching it to clean etc would be fun and at a price point that works for me. I would probably want a suction attachment for the fingers so it could handle cards and other flat tokens but that seems simple enough to build given the 3d models for printing are included.

    I could see myself printing all sorts of costumes for it and using it as an ad hoc characters for tabletop games or as a spare bandmate if I ever finish my synth.

    "We make money by selling the hardware for $1,688, with optional paid software on top."

    The software would have to be quite good and also affordable for me to consider it, as all subscriptions are liabilities. I might one day want my robot to go with me to a show or to do something meaningful. Whenever that happens I will NOT be held hostage by software and will either source my own software or replace parts of the hardware till something works before I keep throwing money at a bad service. I would prefer to just have a good vendor supported software that I don't have to think about but I have trust issues. Privacy would be a huge concern, I can't have this in my garage lab with all my stuff being sent back to your servers for computer vision tasks etc.

  • kooi 26 minutes ago
    Poor buddy looks like he's got the shakes
  • pj_mukh 58 minutes ago
    Can you speak to the tradeoffs of high ratio servers vs QDD motors? Is it power or long term life?

    I can see me doing so many things with this.

  • la6479 1 hour ago
    > Our open SDK includes teleoperation and demonstration tools

    How is teleoperation anything more than a glorified puppet master pulling the strings or a radio controlled toy car?

  • bibstha 30 minutes ago
    Can it climb stairs on a multi level house?
  • mchusma 2 hours ago
    This is cool! As someone who's built based off of old Roomba platforms and other models, I feel like this looks pretty fun and a good price point. What do you think the next version will target? Will you stay educational and low price point? Targeting some other usecases?
  • throwitaway222 29 minutes ago
    A robot can reasonably cost $5000, don't break your back or your health.
  • TristanX 3 hours ago
    Love the design and freedom of this! Curious what the business model of this is to make the company sustainable. Asking that because I was part of the K-scale labs community and sad to see it shut down due to the competition with low-cost chinese robots
  • Tepix 2 hours ago
    Congratulations! That price point is really tempting. I look forward to reading more about this robot.
  • anonym29 1 hour ago
    1. Does this require internet connectivity? If Nori goes out of business, can we keep using these?

    2. Is the app distributed as an APK outside of the Play Store? Does it have any hard requirements on GMS that would prevent users of degoogled devices from using it?

    3. Is every function available through the app possible to perform or recreate with the open SDK? Is this robot (now, and in the future) going to be accessible to technically competent folks who don't own a smartphone at all?

    4. Is there a privacy policy on your website for the robot itself? Is there any telemetry? What kind? Will it be recording me without me asking it to? Is the software that ships on it totally open source?

    Cool project! I might be quite interested, depending on how much it respects user freedoms and privacy.

  • ghm2199 2 hours ago
    awesome!

    Could it put small to medium sized packages in a package room of a condo?

    Hopefully upto 24" in any dimension and 5-10 lbs(and ignore the others it can't handle)?

    The set up of the small room: three stacked total height 5' rack shelves on both sides and a 2' wide passage in the middle.

    Not saying off the shelf but how hard would it be to teach it how to do that?

  • jollyllama 1 hour ago
    Humanoid on wheels might be the winning form factor.
  • calvinmorrison 27 minutes ago
    Why would you price your hardware so low? if this is as good as a customer would imagine, pricing should start around $20,000.
  • TheJoeMan 2 hours ago
    Is there a term for the design style of the plastic panels? I've been seeing it more often, for instance the robot wheeled base looks like an Amazon Delivery Van. Hidden screws, 45degree angles but with soft corner bends.
  • tamimio 1 hour ago
    The site is broken can’t see much, but it would be great to know or show list of the components or BOM, as from experience, some companies cheap on certain sensors/motors etc.
  • dvt 2 hours ago
    Neat vision, but I can only imagine this thing literally fucking everything up. Like, knocking shit off my table, setting my kitchen on fire, bumping into things like an idiot.

    Not sure who the market is here apart from SF tech bros with money to burn.

    • IAmBroom 1 hour ago
      Well, hackers, for one.

      You know: like the first word in this forum's name.

  • regularfry 2 hours ago
    FYI: I backed off the page after about 5 seconds because the scrolling is unusable.
    • MisterTea 1 hour ago
      The scrolling in Firefox on Linux was abysmal.