That's just one example that came to mind. I guarantee I could dig for 30 mins and find a mobile manipulator platform from China that kills it on hardware-to-price ratio that is either 'open enough' or could be made so.

As someone who's dabbled in this before, I guess I'd rather just sit down and plan a BOM and do it myself if that's your markup anyways. Not that it's totally unreasonable for people who just want something super simple out of the box that works.

My general commentary is just that it's sad how much basic servos and what not cost in North America. We've completely ceded this industry to Asia.