[apeytavin]

Actually the BOM cost required to make something stable that can execute manipulation tasks well enough is around $1k+ hence our price. You will find very cheap robots that can pretend to do what this one can, but in practice won't work well enough.

As for the unitree robot, this one is not unlocked for development, does not have onboard GPU, and does not have an arm. If you want it, check the price they give, it's very prohibitive.

You could attach a cheap arm to it but it would also not be stable enough for AI algorithms to run it. We're researchers ourselves, we would have made it cheaper if we could, but then you just can't do anything with it.

Our platform will deliver the experience of a real AI robot, anything cheaper than that is kind of a lie - or forces you to assemble and calibrate, which we do for you here. It is just the nature of trying to deliver a really complete product that works, and we want to stand for that.

EDIT: You can take a look at our autonomous demos there, you need something reliable for these: https://docs.innate.bot/welcome/mars-example-use-cases

[nzach]

I don't want to be too negative, but all your demos seems extremely silly.

Sure, the package is really interesting and definitely got me interested. But not one of the demos seems like a good use of the hardware. If you want to position yourselves mainly as an educational tool I don't think that is a problem. But if you want to target the 'maker' community I think you should put some thought into that.

For example, you could change the 'security guard' demo into a 'housekeeper' demo. You make it roam your house during the day and keep an up-to-date list of things you need to buy. I think this should work reasonably well for laundry and cleaning products. And after you have some historical data you could even do some forecasts about when you need to buy things again.

Another example would be to have it integrated with weather data and when it starts to rain it goes around the house to check if all windows are properly closed. On this same note it could keep track of the window state during the day and send you a reminder to open/close some windows if the temperature/humidity is above/below some threshold.

I think that by having some more 'useful' examples you should be able to get more attention from the 'maker' community. My guess is that a lot of folks that are heavily into home automation would love to have a device like that help with random things around the house.

Best of luck with your product, and I hope you succeed because this idea looks really exciting.

[apeytavin]

This does not sound negative to me and actually is great to read because this is definitely in the list of potential use-cases so we could make a video for it!

As for humidity, we don't have a sensor for it yet BUT the platform was made to be extensible specifically for this so it's easy to add one (see https://docs.innate.bot/main/robots/mars/extending-mars)

Thank you!

[NewUser76312]

That's just one example that came to mind. I guarantee I could dig for 30 mins and find a mobile manipulator platform from China that kills it on hardware-to-price ratio that is either 'open enough' or could be made so.

As someone who's dabbled in this before, I guess I'd rather just sit down and plan a BOM and do it myself if that's your markup anyways. Not that it's totally unreasonable for people who just want something super simple out of the box that works.

My general commentary is just that it's sad how much basic servos and what not cost in North America. We've completely ceded this industry to Asia.

[apeytavin]

Our servos come from Asia. If you can find a platform with everything we have for around $1k BOM happy to review it but we've been pretty deep in picking our components.

Also, fair to say that if indeed you're the kind of person who likes to assemble all of this yourself, you're not directly in our target :)

This is more for AI / software folks who don't want to have to assemble and calibrate everything and risk having an arm that is not repeatable and thus can't actually properly learn. We have seen many folks spend a weekend or more trying to put these together and end up with a barely working platform and then be disgusted of AI robotics