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Show HN: Dobb·E – towards home robots with an open-source platform

394 pointsby MahiShafiullahover 1 year ago
Hi HN! Proud to share our open-source robot platform, Dobb·E, a home robot system that needs just 5 minutes of human teaching to learn new tasks. We&#x27;ve already taken Dobb·E to 10 different homes in New York, taught it 100+ tasks, and we are just getting started! I would love to hear your thoughts about this.<p>Here are some more details, below (or see a Twitter thread with attached media: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;i&#x2F;status&#x2F;1729515379892826211" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;i&#x2F;status&#x2F;1729515379892826211</a> or <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;nitter.net&#x2F;i&#x2F;status&#x2F;1729515379892826211" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;nitter.net&#x2F;i&#x2F;status&#x2F;1729515379892826211</a>):<p>We engineered Dobb·E to maximize efficiency, safety, and user comfort. As a system, it is composed of four parts: a data collection tool, a home dataset, a pretrained vision model, and a policy fine-tuning recipe.<p>We teach our robots with imitation learning, and for data collection, we created the “Stick”, a tool made out of $25 of hardware and an iPhone.<p>Then, using the Stick, we collected a 13 hour dataset in 22 New York homes, called Homes of New York (HoNY). HoNY has 1.5M frames collected over 216 different &quot;environments&quot; which is an order of magnitude larger compared to similar open source datasets.<p>Then we trained a foundational vision model that we can fine-tune fast (15 minutes!) on a new task with only 5 minutes (human time)&#x2F; 90 seconds (demo time) of data. So from start to finish, it takes about 20 minutes to teach the robot a new task.<p>Over a month, we visited 10 homes, tried 109 tasks, and got 81% success rate in simple household tasks. We also found a line of challenges, from mirrors to heavy objects, that we must overcome if we are to get a general purpose home robot.<p>We open-sourced our entire system because our primary goal is to get more robotics and AI researchers, engineers, and enthusiasts to go beyond constrained lab environments and start getting into homes!<p>So here is how you can get started:<p>1. Code and STL files: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;notmahi&#x2F;dobb-e&#x2F;">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;notmahi&#x2F;dobb-e&#x2F;</a><p>2. Technical documentation: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;docs.dobb-e.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;docs.dobb-e.com&#x2F;</a><p>3. Paper: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;arxiv.org&#x2F;abs&#x2F;2311.16098" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;arxiv.org&#x2F;abs&#x2F;2311.16098</a><p>4. More videos and the dataset: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;dobb-e.com" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;dobb-e.com</a><p>5. Robot we used: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hello-robot.com" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hello-robot.com</a>

28 comments

rexreedover 1 year ago
Looks awesome. The Hello Robot shown is fairly pricy. (From the site: &quot;A Fully Integrated Mobile Manipulator for $19,950&quot;).<p>What are the options to do similar manipulations for lower cost on a robotic unit?
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startupsfailover 1 year ago
There is slight optimization. You don’t need 3D printed parts for your reacher grabber data collection stick. Just use $5 iPhone microscope mount to attach the phone securely to your stick.<p>It’d be nice also to think of some common format that includes depth, calibration, trajectory and doesn’t require nonstandard software on an iPhone. Standard camera app&#x2F;cinematic format could be one example, I think.
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sheepscreekover 1 year ago
Fantastic! Great to see a robotics framework that is no-frills (easily reproducible&#x2F;DIY) and is immediately useful. Thank you for open-sourcing it.
sklarghover 1 year ago
I would give up my second car for a robot that could reliable transit a 120 year old house to do dishes and wash and fold laundry.
filipezfover 1 year ago
I was thinking on buying&#x2F;building one robot like this to experiment. Can one fit more than one manipulator on it (so it could more easily do things like hang out clothes, or hold a glass of water and add ice)? More generally, how does the AI model would adapt to diverse robot morphologies?
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Sander_Marechalover 1 year ago
The site seems to be totally broken at the moment (Firefox on Linux). It appears the main video (197.mp4, NS_BINDING_ABORTED) and their CSS framework (bulma.min.css, MOZILLA_PKIX_ERROR_SELF_SIGNED_CERT) don&#x27;t load.
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isawczukover 1 year ago
Is there DIY guide to build similar robot?<p>$19k - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hello-robot.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hello-robot.com&#x2F;</a> is a bit steep.
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GaggiXover 1 year ago
Wow the model architecture seems extremely simple, very cool project.
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cchanceover 1 year ago
Why does it feel like it&#x27;s moving in such jerky steps?
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dominicdotyover 1 year ago
I don&#x27;t think I&#x27;ve seen anyone else suggest it- the Comma Body might be an interesting platform for this. No manipulator unfortunately but a decent place to start.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.comma.ai&#x2F;shop&#x2F;body" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.comma.ai&#x2F;shop&#x2F;body</a>
ReptileManover 1 year ago
I said back in the day that the real killer app for AI will be Rosie from the Jetsons. A robot that can clean, tidy, dust fold cloths etc 24&#x2F;7 and free people completely from house chores will have absurdly fast pick up and market penetration. Good luck.
twoodrowover 1 year ago
Hey there! Thank you for sharing; this is really inspiring.<p>Do you and&#x2F;or anyone else who contributed have specific plans or desires for continuing to contribute to the home robot space?
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fudged71over 1 year ago
This is brilliant.<p>Are considering crowdsourcing the data from more people? It looks fun, and could save me time in the future, so I think this could be worth doing
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praveen9920over 1 year ago
Can it handle any weights on its own? Carrying stuff is definitely one important task that could be useful for lot of people.
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pydryover 1 year ago
There didnt seem to be any bathroom videos. Can it clean a bathroom? If not, what are the impediments to doing that currently?
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owenpalmerover 1 year ago
It&#x27;s like Dobby from Harry Potter!
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upghostover 1 year ago
Bravo! This is some great science and great hacking. Extremely refreshing to see right now.
stcredzeroover 1 year ago
I am reminded of H.E.L.P.eR from <i>The Venture Brothers</i>.
tamimioover 1 year ago
Awesome, looks interesting!
snihalaniover 1 year ago
good stuff Mahi. please commercialize this and visit us in Bay Area!
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KerrAvonover 1 year ago
the linked website seems completely unusable for me in Safari
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throwitaway222over 1 year ago
VB Automation for IRL.
Mizzaover 1 year ago
Love the initiative. I&#x27;ll get one once this starts mature.<p>Seeing things like this makes me think how badly companies like GE, Maytag, etc. all dropped the ball. Rather than innovating on making peoples lives easier - liberation from domestic toil - they just focused on squeezing out every penny by making Chinese crap with a brand name sticker glued, selling worse versions of products invented in the 1950s.<p>Somebody, please, just make a robot which folds my damn laundry!
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asow92over 1 year ago
Master has presented Dobb·E with open-source, Dobb·E is free!
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cyberaxover 1 year ago
Can you train it to attack home invaders? Ideally chanting: &quot;Exterminate! Exterminate!&quot;
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lukevpover 1 year ago
It’s so hilariously slow and jumpy, it moves like a cautious chipmunk! I’m sure it’s gonna be awesome but it is so MVP right now. Also those “houses” in the demo videos are like a grid. Whose house is perfectly clean all the time? My roomba has to adapt to lots of novel situations just to transit the floor.
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eutopianover 1 year ago
I guess Dobb·E is a house elf after all.
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xanderlewisover 1 year ago
Great name.
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