Comment by Razied
1 day ago
Super cool library guys, I think this is by far the quickest way and most painless way to train a humanoid policy. I tried messing around with mujoco and isaaclab stuff a while ago, and it was truly horrible.
A bit more of a hardware question: how modular are the robots? I'm looking at the feet and hands in particular and thinking that there are a bunch of applications where purpose-build parts would work much better than the current ones you have there. I understand the arguments for a humanoid form-factor, but I think flat feet are making it much harder than it should be to get a robust locomotion policy, and training hand-dexterity is also unbelievably hard. Seems like the path of least resistance to usefulness is to have an array of different hand attachments.
Bayonet mount (micro 4/3's camera style) is built on the hands right now -- you can see the stubby ends in the simulated model, you'll be able to print or machine the other end pretty easily with the female receiver u43 piece and the drafted profile.
You can see even with peers like Unitree that there really isn't a 'one size fits all' for manipulation, and with that comes a real need for rapid prototyping and versatility. Good to point out, and its definitely been a focus for us.
And it's been great just as a jumping-off point -- now that the dexterity for the robot is open for interpretation, everyone that has come in to see the robot has come up own ideas on what they could fit on the robot for their application. Everything from spatulas to pallet forks. Really encouraging to have so much interest around it.
As far as feet are concerned, also definitely a focus for us, and we've been looking at different profiles and different materials to improve the stability and the grip on different terrains. Also 3D printed for now, rapid iteration is key.
Kscale Engineer here: The hands are easily swappable using a camera lens style mount. We've tried a couple different hands, the main challenge is they have to fit many actuators in a small footprint.
The feet can also be changed, but not as easily. The bottom of the foot is screwed in.
Flat feet are interesting, the feet are actually a bit curved, they are designed that way to match their counterpart in sim which uses Mujoco's capsules.
I am personally very excited about hot swappable hands!
On the K-Bot prototype I saw at their open house recently, the hands were easily swappable on a camera lens style mount.