Professional SCARA based robotic arm with interchangeable heads and computer vision. 3D print, laser engrave, solder, pick & place...
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$238,321
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Professional SCARA based robotic arm with interchangeable heads and computer vision. 3D print, laser engrave, solder, pick & place...
About this project
Professional Robotic Arm That’s Economic and Smart
Dobot M1 is made to reverse one simple fact: industrial robotic arms are toooo expensive. With 0.02mm precision, velocity of 200 degrees per second, 1.5kg workload and 400mm maximum reach, Dobot M1 makes a perfect essence for a professional workspace, where you can do light manufacturing, and we managed to keep the price under surprising $2000.
Not only that, with features like self-developed user interface, wireless connectivity, handhold teaching, and multi-Dobot cooperation capability, we've provided the most user-friendly environment for self-employers and factories to build their own production platform.
With Dobot M1’s precision, strength and a little bit of your innovation, Dobot M1 can realize features even more than a traditional industrial robotic arm.
One color, more colors. Small size, bigger size. Dobot M1 doesn’t limit your imagination. Dobot M1 has 400mm radius and 250mm height printing area itself, and you can extend this printing area with a 1m long trail.
With Pulse-Width-Modulated laser, it can do both line engraving and shade engraving. Now you can have your favorite photo on many materials.
Bring efficiency into soldering, a high concentration requiring work. Customize your circuit any time! You can build more complicated tool heads like this on Dobot M1’s easy-to-change head tool design.
There’s more. Dobot M1 can be very smart with some accessories, increasing your efficiency and creating more value.
Computer vision can extend the uses of a robotic arm to a higher level. Dobot M1 has integrated visual API, which can be easily adapted with OpenCV or your own visual system.
Moving objects won’t fool Dobot M1’s visual recognizing ability either. Recognize, pick, rotate and place, smoothly done without any mistake.
Give you a hand and it's awesome. Give you two and you can create magic. You can connect to more than one Dobot M1 at once, especially with its wireless connectivity. The possibilities out of the combination are endless.
The built-in mapping and path planning system expands Dobot M1’s reach to a whole floor, working as a high-precision execution end, performing tasks like automatic inventory management or in-house service.
You might start thinking about it
Dobot M1 is highly expandable. With standardized head tool port, and complete protocol, API and SDK, multiple hardware extension ports, what you’ve never imagined can now actually become real!
Simplest Head Tool Port
Unscrew it, insert, screw it back in, done. It’s that simple.
Developing Dobot M1
Dobot M1 is completely programmable. You can use the official script writing environment, or access to its API & SDK on your own. If you’re a stranger to coding, which is totally ok, there’s the visualized programming environment embedded for easier development.
Dobot Community
Welcome to Dobot Forum, a place where you can find help for developing, audience to your great invention, or just friends who share your thoughts!
It’s a fun and exciting thing to watch your work done, bit by bit. To ensure that everyone gets to enjoy the process of making, there’re a few user-friendly features built in Dobot M1, and they allow you to use Dobot M1 without any knowledge of programming.
Great Specs Behind Great Capability
The perfect calibration of DC servo motor, harmonic reducer and kinematic algorithm inside Dobot M1 has brought the best out of Dobot M1. You’ll be amazed at how reliable when it’s working, and you can trust it with your tasks.
Structure
The Dobot M1’s design introduced virtual prototype and structural dynamic simulation, also refined each component’s design and the selection of servo reducers, improving the overall mechanical and electrical system.
Motors
The self-developed DC brushless driving system comes with vibration suppression and inertia compensation algorithm, effectively improving its dynamic response and stability at high speed.
Reducer
We customized and developed a harmonic reducer system for light SCARA type robotic arms, including a supporting bearing structure and a fastening method. We managed to cut down the weight of the harmonic reducers without compromising Dobot M1’s overall performance.
Controlling Algorithm
We integrated into the high-speed controlling system certain features including vibration suppression on servo system, combined driver & controller, enhanced overall dynamic response through inertia compensation and speed feedforward.
Affordable Price, Fast Payback
One simple fact: an industrial SCARA type robotic arm prices between $10,000 and $20,000, two-year payback period. For many small businesses constantly adjusting their production technique, this is too much to afford, not to mention those creative individuals who want a professional making machine.
With less than $2,000, and 3 months of payback period, Dobot M1 is here to fill the missing puzzle.
With more functions and features, Dobot M1 is able to integrate in more steps of production, helping you save more budget.
Dobot M1 is different
Unlike Dobot 1.0, Dobot M1 is designed for a different group of people, who need a more powerful, professional robotic arm that’s affordable, something in between a toy-like model and a high end industrial one. It’s new, no one’s made this product before. And since we enjoy talking to the brilliant minds on Kickstarter, we decided to launch the project here and let you keep talking about it.
Why Again
We’ve launched a campaign on Dobot 1.0 last year, and we heard a lot of voices from backers, which is a great way to understand users, and know how to make a better product needed by people. Once again, we’ve found something new and excited to accomplish, and we’re hoping that Kickstarter could tell us if we’re on the right track.
Can we deliver?
We're still on the way of improving every feature and finalizing the product, but we're confident to ship it to your hands by April/May 2017. Our first product, Dobot 1.0 has been upgrated to Dobot Magician, and it's already finalized and being sold on a regular basis. Our engineering resource is adequate to devote into developing Dobot M1 and meanwhile providing technical support.
NOTICE: Shipping Fee ISN'T Covered in Pledge
Shipping fee isn't covered in the pledge amount, so are that of the products and parts. We're sorry not to include them in the rewards, but they are too varied for different parts and destinations. It would be much better if we list all of them in a clear chart, and adapt to any future policy change. Shipping fees of all countries will be listed in our FIRST update. Backers will have to add this fee into pledge amount accordingly.
Want Additional Toolheads/Accessories?
If you need any additional toolheads or accessories that's not included in your pledge, you can choose it from the list above and add its according price into your pledge. In a future email we'll ask you for which specific toolhead or accessory you want.
Suction cup is one of the most used tools for robotic arms, and that's the most effective tool for pick & place operations. The suction cup series come with different sizes and different layers, they can pick up objects with different sizes and surfaces. When reaching the $300,000 goal, every backer (not including the $1 reward) will be given a full suction cup series for free.
We’re a group of young & passionate engineers. We came to Shenzhen a year ago, a “Silicon Valley” of hardware manufacturing, where great ideas and amazing products rise every day. This is where we came up with Dobot M1, seeing how people fight for their wonderful start-up business, while wasting time on minor, repetitive tasks. We believe that Dobot M1 can give everyone a hand, and the help they need on the path to success.
Risks and challenges
It's not too hard to produce the product, what's hard is shipping them. Because of various custom regulations, some components might face difficulties entering some countries, for example the high volume battery for the mobility platform. We're trying our best to prevent it from happening, but in the most unwanted circumstances, we might resort to canceling that item, or ruling out the regulated part and shipping the remainings. For example, we might ship the mobility platform without its battery.
Learn about accountability on KickstarterFAQ
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Dobot M1 end effectors include suction cup, pen holder, laser, gripper and 3D printing. Just change the end effectors, thus achieving applications like pick & place, drawing & writing, laser engraving, gray engraving, and 3D printing.
Yes, you can. We will publish the CAD file of M1’s end-effector interface and you can design your customized holder to install your own end-effector. -
Sure. Dobot M1 is designed as a platform that people can do great things with it. Besides the applications and software we provide, user can develop their own applications with our SDK. API(Application Program Interface), communication data protocol, and some basic demos are provided freely to our developers. Therefore you can easily develop your application with the your familiar programing language such as Python, Java, C++, C# and etc. The open protocol provides the fundamental method to communicate with Dobot M1, which gives you the power of developing applications with other devices like PLC, smart phone, or other control system.
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Dobot M1 provide some basic visual functions, such as camera calibration, obtaining image, edge detection, image segmentation and coordination extraction. With the provided function, you can implement a basic vision based Pick & Place application for some target object. And we will also provide the API of the mentioned functions for you to have quick setup and develop much more advanced vision applications.
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As a group of robot engineers, we love to see professional robot once defined as industrial manufacturing equipment can be applied in more scenarios, to see robot comes into our life and help people with their creation and improving work efficiency. To make it acceptable, it has to be affordable. The cost is considered from the beginning of our design. To maintain its performance, we hold professional standard for key components such as motor, reducer. And we also managed to simplify the design which also keeps the whole system clean and robust. Removing the non-essential components also helps a lot, e.g. replacing the teaching panel with a user-friendly APP.
With crowd founding, we will be able to sell a lot units(comparing traditional industrial robot) in a short period, which also gives us advantage in the manufacturing stage. Therefore we need your help, more people join us, lower the cost we can achieve.
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A simple answer would be as far as the length of the slide rail.
With the slide rail, the M1 can be set free from its fixed mounting location and become moveable. In which case the M1 can pick and place object form one end to another end of the rail, draw large picture, engraving in bigger range, printing long object(longer than most the 3D printers we can find from the market). The slide rail does extend the capabilities in a great deal. The slide rail we provide is 1.2 M long, and you can replace it with a longer one.