<story><title>Berkeley Blue – Accelerating robotics through low-cost hardware</title><url>https://www.berkeleyopenarms.org</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>msadowski</author><text>Very, interesting project! I found it so inspiring that I included it in the Weekly Robotics #34 that is live since 30s ago (&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;weeklyrobotics.com&amp;#x2F;weekly-robotics-34&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;weeklyrobotics.com&amp;#x2F;weekly-robotics-34&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;p&gt;For anyone interested here is a link to the paper: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;arxiv.org&amp;#x2F;abs&amp;#x2F;1904.03815&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;arxiv.org&amp;#x2F;abs&amp;#x2F;1904.03815&lt;/a&gt; . Having robotic arms for &amp;lt;$5k would be great for research, hobbyist and applications not requiring crazy accuracy. I don&amp;#x27;t have hard data at hand but I doubt that at present you can find commercially available robot with similar characteristics for less than $15k.&lt;p&gt;Another thing that&amp;#x27;s happening here and I really enjoy is how BLDC motors are being used in applications like these. The reason I like it so much is because hopefully there will be a market for cheap actuators that will do the job well enough to be used for some applications. I&amp;#x27;m pretty sure that among other things I&amp;#x27;ve seen a lot of BLDC based actuators on quadruped robots.</text></comment>
<story><title>Berkeley Blue – Accelerating robotics through low-cost hardware</title><url>https://www.berkeleyopenarms.org</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>aerophilic</author><text>Abstract—
Robots must cost less and be force-controlled to enable widespread, safe deployment in unconstrained human environments. We propose Quasi-Direct Drive actuation as a capable paradigm for robotic force-controlled manipulation in human environments at low-cost. Our prototype - Blue - is a human scale 7 Degree of Freedom arm with 2kg payload. Blue can cost less than $5000. We show that Blue has dynamic properties that meet or exceed the needs of human operators: the robot has a nominal position-control bandwidth of 7.5Hz and repeatability within 4mm. We demonstrate a Virtual Reality based interface that can be used as a method for telepresence and collecting robot training demonstrations. Manufacturability, scaling, and potential use-cases for the Blue system are also addressed. Videos and additional information can be found online at berkeleyopenarms.github.io.</text></comment>