Meka Robotics Announces Mobile Manipulator With Kinect and ROS

It looks like an amazing robot, but it doesn't come cheap

2 min read

Erico Guizzo is IEEE Spectrum's Digital Innovation Director.

Meka Robotics Announces Mobile Manipulator With Kinect and ROS

meka robotics m1 mobile manipulator

Meka Robotics is unveiling this week its Meka M1 Mobile Manipulator, a humanoid system equipped with two dexterous arms, a head with Microsoft Kinect sensor, and an omnidirectional wheel base. The robot runs Meka's real-time control software with ROS extensions.

Meka, a San Francisco-based start-up founded by MIT roboticists, says the M1 is designed to work in human environments and combines "mobility, dexterity, and compliant force-control." It seems Meka is targeting first research applications, whereas other companies developing similar manipulators -- like pi4 robotics in Germany and Rodney Brooks' Heartland Robotics -- are focusing on industrial uses.

meka robotics m1 mobile manipulator

The M1-Standard [image, right] comes with a preconfigured set of manipulators: Meka's compliant manipulators with 6 axis force-torque sensors at the wrist and compliant grippers. The pan-tilt head comes with a Kinect 3D camera and 5 megapixel Ethernet camera. And the base is a  small-footprint omni platform with prismatic lift.

The robot's computer runs the Meka M3 and ROS software stacks. Meka says they're "pushing on deeper ROS integration" and expect upcoming versions of their M3 control software to "integrate many of the great packages that the ROS community is generating."

It looks like an amazing robot, but it doesn't come cheap. The M1-Standard is priced at US $340,000.

The M1-Custom [image, top], as the name suggests, allows customers to choose different sensors, hands, and head to build the robot they want (pricetag will vary accordingly). Meka says the first M1-Custom, seen in the video below, shipped last month.

Meka has been working on all the robots subsystems and ROS integration for some time. Inspiration for the M1, the company says, came in part from another robot, Georgia Tech's Cody, which uses Meka arms. With the M1, Meka has finally combined all the subsystems into a single, integrated robot.

More images:

meka robotics mobile manipulator m1

meka robotics mobile manipulator m1

Images and video: Meka Robotics

[ Meka Robotics

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