We built a desktop companion robot that is powered by Arduino UNO Q. Project is open source: source code, 3D printable files and assembly instructions are available at Arduino Project Hub.
Robot is equipped with camera, distance sensor, buzzer, moves head and arms with 3 servo motors and has an animated display. It can recognise objects and respond to it. We build it with idea this should be fun project people can 3D print and build at home themself.
This reminds me of the Otto DIY (https://www.ottodiy.com/), which also used to be a free Arduino (nano) based, 3D-printable robot until it was bought by HP. Just like with the JBR-001 it seems that the main goal has shifted towards making it a commercial product, which is a shame. Especially the low price point made it so attractive for beginners and students alike.
Does anyone know of similar, really open source and free projects like this?
I bought the kit (~€140) because I wanted something building with my kid, rather than spending forever debugging electronic issues and figuring out which obscure parts to buy. Under the hood it's still an ESP, so you can hack it. I 3D printed the body, so my kid chose the colours.
However the software was a bit disappointing. It has weird issues that kind of ruined the fun of it. Sure you can write your own code, but I wanted something approachable for my kid.
Plus they wanted a walking robot... so I guess this will be next :D
Thanks for sharing! Love that it's open source with the 3D files and instructions included. My son and I are going to build this together. Great project.
Thats great to hear! Building it together with your son is exactly the kind of thing we hoped JBR-001 would inspire. Have fun and let us know how it goes!
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.
I'm not sure any of the other Arduino platforms would be able to do the computer vision parts this appears to.
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.
PC?
The cheap Chinese clones don't have to pay for any of the software that Arduino develops so yeah it makes sense they can sell them for cheaper.
An Uno Q is like $60. So what % are you gonna save on the whole project by using a Chinese knockoff?
A lot. The official uno r3 is around $30 while the clone can be as cheap as $5.
Which does not sound much, but to someone living in less developed country, that matters a lot
On a $1000 hacker project that's only a 2% percent cost increase.
In most of the world $1000 is startup capital, not a hobby project
Regardless of where you live - you're not building a household robot for much less than that.
Not every project costs $1000. In fact, most arduino project i saw cost less than $200 in BOM.
I’m sure the Arduino isn’t the only thing you’d save money on with this approach. Keeping the same ratios, it’s a 600% cost increase.
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.
Board or not, it's the chip here that is expensive.
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.
I would never design a robot which looks like it can walk, but actually can’t walk. That feels fundamentally dishonest to me. If nothing else it will let down plenty of people when they realise that the cool robot has legs only for show.
Fair point, the legs can give that impression, but JBR-001 is made as and announced as a desktop companion, legs are there for support and appearance, but it doesnt walk. This is the first version, design files are open source and we would love to see someone build a version that does walk.
I have started to use my editor to build a robotic arm and we are using JEPA for perception and Ornith local model for reasoning as a hybrid approach for arm because there’s no single model that handles both.
We are like... 5 years away from real star wars droids at this pace. keep up the good work!
What was the biggest design challenge you faced?
Thank you! As a Star Wars fans - we are doing our parts to make that happen! ;)
Main challenge was to keep it simple, but cute enough like it has personality. We were tempted to add much more, but we kept it simple enough for people to build it their own way.
Finally I can have me my little worker slave. \o/
...is this exterior design AI generated?
No, that is the syntheticAIdata logo on the front of chest :) All the design files are open source, so you can change it in your own branding. It also looks good printed in other colors. :)