AhaRobot: A Low-Cost Open-Source Bimanual Mobile Manipulator for Embodied AI

1Tianjin University, *Equal Contributions, Corresponding Author

Abstract

Navigation and manipulation in open-world environments remain unsolved challenges in the Embodied AI. The high cost of commercial mobile manipulation robots significantly limits research in real-world scenes. To address this issue, we propose AhaRobot, a low-cost and fully open-source dual-arm mobile manipulation robot system with a hardware cost of only $1,000 (excluding optional computational resources), which is less than 1/15 of the cost of popular mobile robots. The AhaRobot system consists of three components: (1) a novel low-cost hardware architecture primarily composed of off-the-shelf components, (2) an optimized control solution to enhance operational precision integrating dual-motor backlash control and static friction compensation, and (3) a simple remote teleoperation method RoboPilot. We use handles to control the dual arms and pedals for whole-body movement. The teleoperation process is low-burden and easy to operate, much like piloting. RoboPilot is designed for remote data collection in embodied scenarios. Experimental results demonstrate that RoboPilot significantly enhances data collection efficiency in complex manipulation tasks, achieving a 30% increase compared to methods using 3D mouse and leader-follower systems. It also excels at completing extremely long-horizon tasks in one go. Furthermore, AhaRobot can be used to learn end-to-end policies and autonomously perform complex manipulation tasks, such as pen insertion and cleaning up the floor. We aim to build an affordable yet powerful platform to promote the development of embodied tasks on real devices, advancing more robust and reliable embodied AI.

Teleoperated Long-Horizon Tasks

Delivering the Coffee (Long Task)

Picking and Heating the Sushi (Long Task)

Autonomous Tasks

Pick up the Box (50 Demos)

Collect the Toys (80 Demos)

Insert the Pen (50 Demos)

RoboPilot Teleoperation

Hand-to-Hand Retargeting

Web-based Interface

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Wei Jing, Xiao Zhu and Haitao Wang for their insightful discussions on robot design, as well as Ruitao Wang, Yuxiao Li, and Siyu Wang for their support in video recording.

BibTeX

@misc{cui2025aharobotlowcostopensourcebimanual,
  title={AhaRobot: A Low-Cost Open-Source Bimanual Mobile Manipulator for Embodied AI}, 
  author={Haiqin Cui and Yifu Yuan and Yan Zheng and Jianye Hao},
  year={2025},
  eprint={2503.10070},
  archivePrefix={arXiv},
  primaryClass={cs.RO},
  url={https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.10070}, 
}