Our vision is to take a massive step toward the robot revolution where labor and mundane tasks are done by ubiquitous general-purpose robots; just as computers have proliferated across everyone’s daily lives in the decades prior. To achieve ubiquity, we aim to provide robots to the hands of as many people as possible by designing a cheap yet capable robotic platform through open-source accessibility. We also believe that intelligent robots are orders of magnitude more useful than those being utilized in the current industrial factories. To this end, it is of the utmost importance to us that the software is easily accessible by current state-of-the-art machine learning libraries such as PyTorch and TensorFlow.
The Dorean is our main product that utilizes a 7-degree-of-freedom cable-driven serial robotic arm. The arm is projected to be able to lift 5kg of weight at full cantilever at the highest torque settings. It comprises mostly of 3D printed components made of PLA+ plastic. The cable-driven nature of the design allows for all the motors to be positioned stationarily at the base of the robotic arm. The cable design also utilizes pulley reductions to allow for direct drive control and zero backlash.
The analog photo-encoder (APE) system we have developed is a similar design to the ones developed by Haddington Dynamics but with improvements allowing it to be more accurate and precise while also being a global positional encoder. The system utilizes a hall effect sensor to provide a rough initial prior angle while an optical analog sensor allows for the refinement of the angle to exceed 17 bits of precision reliably. Although this may not be on par with high-end encoders, this will be orders of magnitude cheaper to produce as it can even work with imprecise 3D printed encoder wheels. This encoder is utilized in the feedback control loop of the Doran but can also be a stand-alone product for any encoder application.
Dorean is on track to test a 2DOF prototype. This will include longevity testing, winch windup concerns, and cable friction concerns.
The Analog Encoder needs a test on new hall effect sensors for the prior angles.
Plans for customer discovery to gain a better understanding of the general demand for our products.
Plans for starting a YouTube channel to post development updates as well as gaining traction on the general concept.
