I’m sad that it uses the Uno Q. I really dislike the uno Q, since it uses QC SoC, which means no cheap Chinese clone, which is not very accessible to everyone.
this is built by Arduino specifically to sell more Uno Q. You want them to start promoting clones? What product do you make and we'll promote clones of those too.
This isn’t a household robot. It’s barely a robot at all. It can’t move itself. It can pivot its head and move its “arms “ on one axis, but it can’t manipulate anything at all.
It’s a poorly made “AI” camera without decent audio with two fake arms that can kind of gesticulate but not do anything, that looks like a much cooler robot than it is.
This can be built with a a BOM cost of around $30 total, plus 3d printing filament. I know because one of the things we are building actually has a similar processor with an npu as well as an esp32 with wifi/BT and mcu functionality, SD card, camera, 9dof gyro/mag, barometric sensor, mic, audio amplifier and speaker, as well as a 1500 pixel SPAD sensor. Cheap servos are $3 each.
Actually to build this and get image recognition you could just use a esp32-p4/c6 module and run it in python without Linux, BOM cost more like $20
Chinese clones of Arduinos are normally between 3x-6x cheaper, and if your project uses dozens or hundreds or thousands of them, especially in developing countries, that's a major price delta.
I assume at those scales it quickly becomes economical to design a custom board instead of using modules that are probably seated on cheap custom PCBs anyways.
If you have a bit of time to learn the skills, it’s economical to design a custom board even for 5-10 units. An integrated controller module like an ESP32 can basically just be plonked onto a board with a voltage regulator and used like an Arduino.
