Frequently Asked Questions
Q: What’s the history behind Blue?
A: The Blue Robot grew out of the Blue Project at the Berkeley AI Research lab, with the intent of developing a low-cost, compliant, capable robot arm for the AI era. The project was led by David Gealy, Stephen McKinley and Pieter Abbeel. It was supported by the Bakar Fellows Program, the National Science Foundation, and Toyota Research Institute.
Q: What’s the mission of Berkeley Open Arms?
A: Providing a low-cost, compliant, capable robot arm for every robotics researcher. In doing so accelerating the path to more capable robots, and hopefully sooner have robots helping us out in all our aspects of life.
Q: Can I get a Blue robot?
A: We are first distributing early release arms to developers and industry partners. A product release would occur within the next six months, please fill out this form for priority access.
Q: When will I get my Blue robot?
A: We plan to have the Production Edition of the Blue robot arm (Blue V2) available by 2020, to get priority, please express your interest below!
Q: How much will the Production Edition cost?
A: We still have many sourcing and manufacturing challenges ahead of ourselves to continue to bring the price down, but at this point we are pretty hopeful to achieve the $5,000 ball-park.
Q: Any chance I can get a Blue robot sooner?
A: At a significant premium, we will be offering Limited Edition Beta versions of the Blue robot arm to early adopters with anticipated delivery in May 2019!
Q: Why would I pay a premium for a Limited Edition Beta if I can just wait a year for the lower cost Production Edition?
A: Buying a Limited Edition Beta is the best way to get a unique understanding of the Production Edition arms today, including the opportunity to already start writing your own software and to provide us feedback while we finalize the production hardware and software. Also, why wait till 2020 to see and work on the future of robotics?
Q: Alright, I am in, so where do I apply for this Limited Edition Beta Blue?
A: Please fill out this form for priority access.
Q: Any other way I could support this project?
A: Please contact us at berkeleyopenarms@gmail.com
Q: How did you test Blue? How do you know it will work with advanced AI?
A: Our working hypothesis has been that if a human can reliably tele-op Blue, then an advanced AI should also be capable of controlling Blue. Please also check out the ICRA 2019 paper.
Q: What are some of your personal favorite use cases for Blue?
A: We designed with the home in mind, and are especially excited about the prospect of enabling longer independent living as well as physical tele-presence.
Most of all, we are excited to get Blue into as many people’s hands as possible, and enable others to build their dream robot applications on top of Blue!