
Robel: Robotics Benchmarks for Learning with Low-Cost Robots - theafh
https://ai.googleblog.com/2019/10/robel-robotics-benchmarks-for-learning.html
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netinstructions
They may be lower cost than the status quo, but $3199 to $3699 is out of my
reach as a (non professional) hobbyist. I hope maybe one day though!

[https://sites.google.com/view/roboicsbenchmarks/getting-
star...](https://sites.google.com/view/roboicsbenchmarks/getting-started)

[https://www.trossenrobotics.com/d-kitty.aspx](https://www.trossenrobotics.com/d-kitty.aspx)

[https://www.trossenrobotics.com/d-claw.aspx](https://www.trossenrobotics.com/d-claw.aspx)

Not quite in the realm like the $50 to $90 'Google Voice / Google Vision AI'
kits

[https://aiyprojects.withgoogle.com/](https://aiyprojects.withgoogle.com/)

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pmorais
You’re not the intended audience. This is meant for small research labs that
are just starting up and want to enter the RL/Robotics research space and
can’t afford a $400,000 PR2 or $150,000 shadow hand.

~~~
rficcaglia
Totally worth the money :)

[https://youtu.be/c3Cq0sy4TBs](https://youtu.be/c3Cq0sy4TBs)

~~~
watersb
"The Proud Robot", Henry Kuttner, Astounding 1943

[https://www.prosperosisle.org/spip.php?article863](https://www.prosperosisle.org/spip.php?article863)

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contingencies
Maybe I am missing something but fundamentally you can "learn" in the ML sense
with any sensor and effector.

Examples of cheap sensors: MEMS microphone, camera, voltage sensor, mass
sensor, distance sensor, multi-axis position sensors
(gyroscope/magnetometers).

Examples of effectors: Any kind of motor, solenoid, LEDs, etc.

If you want to constrain the question to 3D motion, here is a suggestion -
hack the controller of any existing RC car platform. Add overhead position
sensing within a fixed arena added via external camera. Maybe add a MEMS
microphone (USD$3) or position sensor (~USD$10) to verify airtime/orientation.
ML problem #1: Add a ramp. Try to get it to jump highest (longest time
airborne). ML problem #2: Same with a power efficiency metric. ML problem #3:
Same with a time efficiency metric applied to navigation from a random start
point and orientation. ML problem #4: Motor noise vs. jump height
optimization.

~~~
cbames89
Byron Boot's lab at Georgia Tech does a lot of interesting work with larger-
scale R/C vehicles. That being said, by adding more degrees of freedom you're
making the configuration space of the robot higher. In many cases, higher
dimension configuration spaces are more difficult for traditional sampling-
based approaches. Learning approaches may be able to bias their solutions to
avoid large sections of this configuration space.

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dekhn
I'm interested in hearing from anybody who has sucessfully built a useful
research robot for < $1K. Even just a SCARA arm.

my experience has been everything < $1K uses crappy servos.

~~~
mojolozzo
The servos are certainly where you can spend most money when building a robot
for research. I tried building small research robots with small servos ($25
each), see results at the end of this video:
[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=q8jgu-
EtCFc](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=q8jgu-EtCFc)

The total cost for one robot was well below 1k. The servos are $25 each
(Turnigy 306G if remember correctly), all connecting parts are 3d printed, the
electronics and batteries are about $50, and you could add a raspberry pi for
$50. So in total <$500, depending on number of DOFs.

Of course, these servos don't have the same torque as Dynamixles, for example.
But they are lighter!

~~~
Judgmentality
Do you have any videos of the actual robots or just the simulation?

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natvert
our lab uses Dynamixles in the widow x
([https://www.trossenrobotics.com/widowxrobotarm](https://www.trossenrobotics.com/widowxrobotarm))
and the servos alone are 70% of the total cost.

is anyone aware of an open-source alternative to these servos? this would be a
great contribution to the community, if not available already

~~~
Iv
I have a hard time finding a good heavier duty servo that does not cost the
price of a car. I looked into how to make one from a DC motor. There are some
open source project about it:

[https://hackaday.io/project/9433-brushed-dc-servo-
drive](https://hackaday.io/project/9433-brushed-dc-servo-drive)

[https://www.crowdsupply.com/citrus-
cnc/tarocco](https://www.crowdsupply.com/citrus-cnc/tarocco)

But for some reason, most projects I found do not use DC motors:

[https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/tropicallabs/mechaduino...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/tropicallabs/mechaduino-
powerful-open-source-industrial-servo-m)

[https://odriverobotics.com/](https://odriverobotics.com/)

If you ever find a good OSS servo, could you ping me?

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toxik
Curious that they wouldn’t include PPO in their related work, but DDPG. Did I
miss something important that makes PPO inapplicable here?

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DrNuke
You can translate this short article of mine
[https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/azzerare-con-poco-il-
debito-t...](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/azzerare-con-poco-il-debito-
tecnico-dellingegnere-giuseppe-cornacchia/) to get real, low-cost “toys” for a
small mechatronics lab suited to almost any dl & rl starting level endeavor
you want. (tldr: less than $1.5k would suffice in first instance)

