Last year, French startup Pollen Robotics debuted Reachy, an open source humanoid robot (at least the top half of one) capable of performing a wide variety of tasks – from traditional R&D to demonstrations of food products and services. This year, Reachy is back and more capable than ever. Instead of programming Reachy’s movements, users can now control the robot directly by simply putting on a VR headset.
Once paired with Reachy, the user can see what the robot sees through its front cameras and control the robot’s arms using VR controllers to, say, play a tic-tac-toe game in the CES showroom. This method can also be used to quickly train Reachy for delicate tasks that require precise motor control, rather than programming these movements manually. The company has also updated Reachy’s cameras and processor since last year, although Reachy will still cost him about $ 17,000.