HOPELite: Open-source, DIY, humanoid robots: First Finger Draft

https://github.com/TheRobotStudio/HOP...

A working finger design that can be assembled with just two and half metres of 0.45mm braided fishing line and a crimp.

Recommended line is Sufix 832 80lbs break strain with Gore fibres: https://amzn.to/4fgYKCx

The HOPELite arms have 7 directly driven degrees of freedom with a hybrid tendon system to add power in specific ranges of motion.

The HOPELite hands have 17 DoF for four fingers and an opposable thumb in the standard human configuration.

The fingers have the last two joints fused in to a single part for simplicity and for accomodating larger sensors in the finger tips - WIP.

HOPELite: Open-source, DIY, humanoid robots

I want to foster a community that changes the world.

HOPELite Discord Community link:   / discord  

In a literal sense, the widespread adoption of robots is exactly that: the power to change the physical world with digital systems.

Open source has a crucial role to play in the development of this technology only if the tools are available to make that a practical reality for "the masses".

Open source software would clearly be a nonsense if they weren't billions of devices readily available for coding.

To this end, lowering cost whilst maintaining an adequate level of functionality is the highest design constraint.

The intention is to lever the tremendous performance increases that AI software offers to offset the significant differences in low cost hardware.

This is the great promise that needs testing: can AI genuinely control much lower cost hardware and finally produce the robots that we've all been dreaming of?

3d printed plastic robots offer tremendous precision but significantly lower stiffness, a trait that is true in fact of all the lower cost versions of components in a robot. Here there may be a happy coincidence because the problem with expensive hardware is that it cannot be safely used around people. Industrial robots are made of metal and remarkably stiff gearboxes to produce rapid, highly precise movements - like a robot.

But people don't move that way, we are bouncy and capable of feats of strength and precision that far outperform an industrial machine of similar weight and power.

So, we know it's possible to learn how to control a bouncy system and we know they're lower cost.

All that's missing are the plans and instructions to build a DIY population of humanoid robots.