Cone-E: An Open Source Bimanual Mobile Manipulator for Generalizable Robotics

Mehmet Enes Erciyes, Haritheja Etukuru, Soumith Chintala, Nur Muhammad Mahi Shafiullah, Lerrel Pinto

Keywords: Whole-body Control, Bimanual Manipulation, Mobile Manipulators

TL;DR: We introduce Cone-E: an open-source, low-cost bimanual mobile manipulator designed to be a reliable general-purpose robotics research platform.

Abstract: Recent success of learning for robotics has spawned much interest and demand for capable robot platforms that may eventually approach human-level competence. However, current robot platforms for such research largely fall in one of two categories: $\textit{static bimanual}$ setups for manipulation, or $\textit{mobile bipedal}$ setups for locomotion – with a significant lack of bimanual mobile manipulators. We introduce Cone-E: an open-source, low-cost bimanual mobile manipulator designed to be a reliable general-purpose robotics research platform. Following the best practices in robot platform design for indoor environments, Cone-E integrates a compact swerve-drive base enabling omnidirectional motion, a telescopic lift mechanism affording a vertical reach range from the floor to high shelves, and dual 6-DoF arms to achieve whole-body mobility and manipulation. The design emphasizes modularity and reproducibility using off-the-shelf components, 3D printed parts, and open-source software, while remaining affordable with a bill of materials (BOM) cost of $12K.

Submission Number: 17