This Tiny, Mysterious Robot Arm Is Amazing

If you’re anything like me, you tend to separate robot arms into two broad categories: small toys and large industrial tools. But what about situations in which you need the capability of a real industrial robot in a small package? Oleksandr Stepanenko recently showed off a beautiful robot arm that fills that niche and it is very mysterious.

I say that this is mysterious, because Stepanenko hasn’t provided any details about its hardware, firmware, or software. All we get is the tantalizing demonstration video and a few of its specs.

However, those specs are very impressive. It is a six-axis robot arm with a payload of 250g, a reach of 250mm, and a weight of just 1.5kg. And most importantly, it has repeatability better than 0.001mm.

That last number is very, very noteworthy. That is difficult to achieve and I probably wouldn’t believe it if the video didn’t show it by having the robot tap an indicator. Though we don’t know anything about the hardware, that repeatability implies the robot has actuators that reduce or eliminate backlash — probably harmonic or cycloidal drive, given the form factor.

This isn’t just a cool demo, because a robot arm like this would be very useful in several industries. In a lab, for example, the ability to automatically move things with this kind of flexibility and precision would be indispensable.