We just got the Bumble v0.2 operational, especially big thanks to Taras H. for the mechanical design here!
As you see in the video, the motion of the bot, especially the head, is extremely smooth. We decided to drop the Dynamixel servos that were in version 0.1, and go instead for Brushless Gimbal Motors that you’d typically find stabilizing the camera on a drone.
In real life, it’s almost surreal watching the robot operate at this speed. The head just moves extremely smoothly, and completely silently. The main drive motors are also extremely quiet. This means that the robot should end up extremely low maintenance, and will stand up to lots of repetitive motions without any degradation.
It’s unfortunately not a cheap robot, but the total BOM cost is just under $2,000 USD (The most expensive part is the Jetson AGX Xavier dev kit). The cost of a comparable robot is probably in the $5k-$10k range from something like a Segway platform . A GoodDog Bumble is something that you can build with just basic tools, and a generic 3D printer.
All of the mechanical design files, 3D printing files, and provisioning instructions are available below: