Help building PR1 style robot

Let's Make Robots Beginners
1

Hi all,

Beginner here. I wanted to do something challenging and cool during the pandemic and came across this YouTube video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyHWkQcin7I. The robot in this video is called PR1 and it was built by Stanford researchers.

I would like to build something similar and started looking for hardware to assemble this. I found a few reasonably priced options but I’m still missing a number of parts. I would appreciate suggestions on how to build this.

Here’s what I was able to find so far
Mobile base - Kobuki mobile base
Arm - www.amazon.com/dp/B0793PFGCY/ref=sspa_dk_detail_0?psc=1&pd_rd_i=B0793PFGCY&pd_rd_w=39taI&pf_rd_p=48d372c1-f7e1-4b8b-9d02-4bd86f5158c5&pd_rd_wg=23WeU&pf_rd_r=YMFTYBD3EJ60AQH3M4HX&pd_rd_r=64210d61-e2ef-4174-8246-df5986f849f3&spLa=ZW5jcnlwdGVkUXVhbGlmaWVyPUExVzhONlE2RDRSUlJFJmVuY3J5cHRlZElkPUEwNTI3OTQwVk8yUjhNREFJMUYmZW5jcnlwdGVkQWRJZD1BMDgzMTcxMTFKSTcyR1dLRFo0RlMmd2lkZ2V0TmFtZT1zcF9kZXRhaWwmYWN0aW9uPWNsaWNrUmVkaXJlY3QmZG9Ob3RMb2dDbGljaz10cnVl

I’m not sure how to construct the body along with the rotating cylinders that the arm is attached to though.

I would really appreciate any pointers or suggestions on how to go about constructing this.

Thanks,
Ed

3

Hello @junorobot and welcome to the RobotShop community,

That seems like a great project! If you want it to look as similar as possible to the original robot I recommend to see the following:
http://personalrobotics.stanford.edu/?utm_source=robots.ieee.org
Rationale and Design of an Intrinsically Safe Personal Robot

As you can see this is a very advanced project so if you are a beginner I suggest you start from something simpler. Another good idea is to do what you are already doing which is to start from already made parts like the arm and the base of the robot, however, you must take into account factors like the payload of the base and the arm, the degrees of freedom, the reach among other features mentioned in the document.

To rotate the arm you can use something similar to thisTo rotate the arm you can use something similar to this:


You might also want to take a look at this:
https://www.robotshop.com/en/lynxmotion-smart-servos-articulated-arm.html

And the “How to Make a Robot” tutorial series might interest you

I hope this information can help you or give you some ideas