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Comment by MichaelRazum | Hacker News Reader

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MichaelRazum·

Looks cool. Wher did you get the robot? Is it possible to buy the hardware?

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It's a hello robot Stretch [1], which costs ~$20K.

[1] https://hello-robot.com/product

Very cool! Thanks a lot.

Soo cool to see those being used! I worked for Aaron at Google X Robotics a few years back. He left to start Hello Robot and I was just wondering how all that is going. Sounds better than the team at Google - that whole project was canceled recently.

>>U.S. Patent No. 11,230,000 and other Patents Pending.

Curious about the claims on that patent. Robotics is already hard enough, I'm sure it will become easier with people suing each other because "you copied my wheeled robot with an arm attached to it!".

The claims are reasonably specific actually[1]

If your robot doesn't have these specific design choices, plus some others, it's not in violation. * Have a unibody base * Have an arm that is raised and lowered along a trapezoidal rail by a belt-driven linear actuator * Have a fisheye camera mounted on the center pole

[1] https://patents.google.com/patent/US11230000B2/en?oq=11%2c23...

Are these claims OR-ed or AND-ed?

Anyway, a base that looks like a Roomba, with a pole and an arm attached to it doesn't strike me as novel.

Patent claims are AND. IANAL, but my understanding is if what you built doesn't match the claims exactly, it's not infringing. So, in this case, using a non-belt-driven linear actuator, or using a square rail, or using a two piece base would all be ways of avoiding infringement.

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