[throwup238]

A decade ago robotic arms like the ones in the video would have cost thousands - if one that small and simple were available at all without bespoke development. Now they’re a cheap kit and go up to six DoF and all kinds of end affectors.

[atonse]

What are some good brands of robotic arms that do this and are easily programmable?

[throwup238]

The one in the video is the SO-100: https://github.com/TheRobotStudio/SO-ARM100

There are now too many to mention and you can but some off Amazon for under $150 (I’m used to Staublis and Fanucs at work so I don’t know which cheap ones are best). None of them are easily programmable. They’re easy to control but making them do the physical action you want is a lot harder - most of the time it’s literally a bunch of instructions like “turn motor 1 23 degrees clockwise” that’s carefully tested to be repeatable. That’s been a problem in industrial automation since they first came out.

That’s why transformers are interesting in robotics, there’s been quite a bit of research (much of it popping up on the HN front page) about using transformers model to control the robot. Hopefully there will be a big breakthrough here in the next few years and robotic arms become easier to use.