Stringman robot reaches a whole room with just four motors for $800
Stringman, an $800 open-source room scale gripper robot
Neufangled Robotics' Stringman is an open-source, OSHWA-certified gripper robot that hangs from ceiling-corner anchors and reaches an entire 7×7×3 m room using only four motors. At $795, it claims roughly 500× the work-area volume per dollar of a comparable research arm, with about 1.9 kg average payload. It runs air-gapped on local Wi-Fi, works with LeRobot, and ships with published CAD, PCBs, and control software.
In robotics, price is basically actuator count.
- nhnifong
Hi there, I'm Nathaniel, the creator of this robot. Thanks for posting it :)
If you have any questions feel free to ask.
Can it kill you? no probably not. The tension limit kicks in and lets the line out if you pull too hard.
Will it work in a room with a ceiling fan? usually its fine since you can lower the work area ceiling to exclude the fan.
Will it make my kids learn to not pick up after themselves? They never will anyways.
- goda90
I kind of want to try something like this for garden weeding. Put a small spinning blade instead of a grabber arm on it. Computer vision can identify any weeds popping up and it'll go over and cut them before they get too big/woody for the blades. The challenge would be dodging taller plants and probably the forces that the blade would put on it.
- histk_garden
I made a big one for my garden. It is like a that scene in honey i shrunk the kids with Rick Moranis laying in that cantilevered flying cot thing but i use 2 high speed winches and some machined aluminum and the cabling sort of like an etch a sketch controls. I control it with the same usb gamepad that titanic sub imploded with. i can raise and lower myself about 4 feet to get inbetween the rows. It is pretty fun to play in too. I want to build a robot to get in it and then remotely control the whole thing. Its basically the same thing as the NFL spider cam but holds more because I'm a fatass and performs much worse. I used 12 foot 4x4s with concrete bases. Its about a 20 feet by 35 feet garden. My only real concern is the longevity of the cables, the hight im suspended at isn't really dangerous but i know i am not using the right cables for the winch. 3/16 in marine grade vinyl coated 4200 pound working load limit. my spools or whatever you want to call it is 6 inches im afraid theres too much tension on parts sometimes. I had an alternate design that used water as a ballast and you just pump or drain water to move around the grid but that was too ambitious for my lazy ass.
- bigwheels
It's an interesting concept, but I think I'll hold out for the full-body humanoid version.
There is an undeniable allure to the idea of a bipedal chassis realizing I'm an inefficient drain on corporate resources, then stabbing me to death while I sleep due to a minor Terms of Service violation.
- rao-v
This really needs a way to pull the strings and bot out of the way when not in use.
Something like an extra string running along the edge of a wall that could “gather up” the diagonal strings and tuck them away on an edge or corner would make this a much easier impulse purchase.
- barbazoo
> Tension is all you need
Rarely does a product announcement make me laugh out loud :)
- conductr
My thoughts while watching the video
Robot picks up clothes -> this is stupid
Robot picks up kids toys -> this is brilliant
In reality though, I think the cables will never work in a household situation. It's a interesting concept and I'm sure it was fun to build :) Makes me wonder what commercial application this would work for, I'm sure there's something out there that would benefit from this over waiting on humanoid tech
- monkmartinez
Awesome!!! I love projects like this.
Reminded me of the Hangprinter https://github.com/tobbelobb/hangprinter which has been around for around for long time... always wanted to build one.