Service Robots

Robotnik Introduces the RB-1 Mobile Manipulator

Robotnik RB-1 Mobile Manipulator

Spanish company Robotnik introduced earlier this week their very own RB-1 mobile manipulator. The robot is designed for indoor use in household as well as professional environments, and is brought to life by using well known Dynamixel Pro series servo actuators which add up to 13 degrees of freedom (DOF), depending on variant. It is well suited for remote manipulation or human assistance applications and can be fully autonomous or manually controlled.

Robotnik RB-1 Mobile Manipulator
RB-1 Mobile Manipulator rendering | Photo: Robotnik

RB-1 aims to be a powerful research and development platform, its modular and scalable design, and open-source ROS framework allow for extensive customization and cost effectiveness with respect to applications.

RB-1’s anthropomorphic arm has 7 DOF and is equipped with one parallel gripper with 1 DOF, an additional 1 DOF is added by the height adjustable torso with 360mm of travel. The robot’s maximum height is 1391mm (about 54.7 inch), it weighs of 60kg (132lbs) and is capable of carrying payloads up to 4kg at half range or 2kg regardless of the arm’s position.

The robot senses its environment and navigates through it with the aid of a RGB-D (vision and depth) sensor, either an ASUS Xtion PRO Live or a Microsoft Kinect mounted on a 2 DOF pan and tilt head, and a Hokuyo URG-04LX-UG01 scanning laser range finder, reviewed a while ago, located in its differential drive mobile platform.

[yellow_box]Read more about Laser Sensors for Robotic Applications[/yellow_box]

The brain of RB-1 is represented by a powerful embedded PC with a Core i7 CPU, 8GB of RAM and 200GB of storage running ROS, which means that vast amounts of documentation and resources are available online, all backed up by a well established community of professionals and enthusiasts.

For complete specifications please access the RB-1 datasheet.

RB-1 can be preordered for 46.200 Euro or about US $52.000 in complete 13 DOF configuration, the motorized platform can also be bought separately for 12.500 Euro. For additional variants and pricing please check out their site below.

Source Robotnik via Automaton and ROS News

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.