UBR-1 robot costs a fraction of older siblings

Unlimited Robotics UBR-1 is about the price of a car (photo: Eric Gulbransen)

Gallery (16 images)

A new research robot was revealed today by robotic unlimited to having an opportunity to infiltrate the laboratories of Robotics in the world. Robotics unlimited founding members come from Willow Garage, where they helped to develop the PR2 (a robot famous to perform everyday tasks such as folding laundry). The problem with the PR2 was its considerable price; at $400,000, it was simply out of reach of most university laboratories. Unlimited Robotics UBR-1 is essentially a PR2 "lite", and in $35,000 will not break the Bank.

The UBR-1 is what the industry calls a mobile manipulator - a robot with an arm and clamp to interact with objects, moves on wheels. It is designed to be able to do all kinds of tasks that we take for granted, such as opening doors and move things from here to there. With its seven degrees of freedom, the arm is flexible enough to reach objects lying on the floor to pick them up and place them on a counter. And as human support from Toyota Robot, has a telescopic trunk of additional height when you need it.

See the world that surrounds it with a sensor of Primesense 3D on its head, similar to the Microsoft Kinect technology. A scanner laser mounted on the front of the wheel base helps you navigate through mapping of its surroundings and, most important, to find obstacles of the level of the floor. USB port located near the head allow some degree of customization of the sensor if it is necessary, but it comes with the ability to navigate to the right of the box.

The UBR-1 clamp can be simple, but allows that the robot picked up all sorts of things (photo: Eric Gulbransen)

The UBR-1 batteries last up to five hours before needing to be recharged, or double that if is it mostly to idle. It is smart enough back to a charging dock (sold separately) when put under the juice. Weight 73 kg (160 lb) with a footprint of 49.5 cm (19, 5-in), is significantly thinner and lighter than the PR2, allowing you to negotiate tighter spaces.

In comparison, the PR2 has many more sensors and two arms instead of only one, but taking into account the price difference, I suspect that the PR2 is not much in this world. Even its name, the UBR-1, suggests that newer models will come in the next few years that could very well add that these features come. It is a measure which, as industrial robot Robotics radically rethink Baxter, could accelerate the adoption of Robotics technology.

In just a few years, Willow Garage has made an impeccable job of starting the mobile robot revolution. It created a strong platform in the PR2, which then lent to some of the most prestigious universities in the world. He also created the open source Robot operating system and foster a community that shares their work to accelerate development.

Soon all of that may be a footnote, if you claim to be unlimited Robotics bargain-priced robot. Widespread adoption seems likely, so it will be interesting to see what achieves the UBR-1 up in the next few years.

You can see the UBR-1 in action in the video below.

Source: Unlimited Robotics by IEEE Spectrum

Share about the author Jason is a freelance writer based in central Canada with a background in computer graphics. He has written a few hundreds of humanoid robots in your plastic Pals website and is an avid gamer with an unsightly collection of retro consoles, cartridges and controllers.   All articles by Jason Falconer http://twitter.com/plasticpals
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