This is a question for Revolution owners. I'm in China right now checking up on our factories. Boy is it ever a great experience! I've been here a few times throughout the last year, researching available products and manufacturing abilities of factories. There are quite a few factories and companies involved in the manufacturing of the product that you're using - this week was the first time we were able to demonstrate the completed product that they had been working on. This is because each factory works on a small part of the robot, so they have never seen the robot completely assembled and running... And they love it! I wish you could see the smiles on their faces
One of the companies manufacturers our servo. To keep the cost low and the strength high, we had to practically design a servo of our own. Yesterday I sat down with the owner and some of their engineers. We came up with a stronger servo with smart Digital Programming. The new experimental servo that we designed this week is very quite and only emits a quiet hum, which sounds very science fiction-like. Today we assembled a JD with the new servos to see how it performed. The strength is increased a little, but the audible noise is decreased dramatically. These new servos are very very quiet!
The only drawback to these servos is the manufacturing cost. Because they use higher precision gears, quieter motor, smoother bearings, and a highspeed microcontroller... the cost is much higher.
So the question I have for you existing users, is this.. Now that you have experienced Revolution, would you have paid more if the product included quieter volume digital servos over the current servos? Even if they operated functionally the same as the current EZR Servos?
Estimated MSRP of the products would be...
- JD would cost $599
- Six would cost $549
- Roli would cost $499
Ironic you should mention this... noisy servos in general have always bugged me somewhat... I think this is what has kept me (in part anyway) from buying JD from you guys up until now. Just don't like a loud servo buzzing bot in general..
To me this is a no brainer. I would gladly pay more for the better servos... I assume you would also carry them separately in the store as well?...
You got my vote for the new servos and price bump
Edit If you get a split response to this maybe you guys could consider offering the Revolution bots in 2 flavours... Regular and Pro versions... Those of us who order the pro version would get the upgraded servos and perhaps a few other minor bells and whistles... Just a thought...
@DJ.
Good to hear you are enjoying your China trip. I second Richards post. Noisy/buzzing servos are a bugbear for me also, and would happily pay the extra beer tokens for something quieter. And the little extra increase in strength would also be a plus.
Like Richard said, "a no brainer" for me too.
Steve.
If there was a choice between current JD in the store and quiet JD with a $100 difference I would pick the current, noisier one personally.
Personally speaking neither my Six nor JD make "too much" noise. Yes they make noise (six much less than JD however I haven't yet carried out the shoulder fix on JD) but the noise is not too much in my opinion.
The prices for the robots are already great and I am sure adding $100 to the prices wouldn't really put too many people off. They are great value if you consider the price of JD vs any other biped kit or pre-built robot.
But, purely looking at the servo buzz vs the cost of quieter servos, taking in to account the servos are not too noisy as is, I would say it isn't needed.
If it were me, I would do a regular and pro like Richard mentioned. I don't really mind the servo buzz, but if for some reason I didn't like it, I could upgrade.
That's great feedback. I don't think it will be financially and logistically possible to carry two versions of each robot. We already front $300,000 per batch of robots to be manufactured, plus inventory storage fees.
We do not have much of a markup - only enough to cover salaries and operational costs. Our goal is to keep the prices low for mass purchase accessibility.
I believe the question is limited to increase price or keep existing servos.
I hate to say it, but I think $100 more would cost you sales. It was already a tight squeeze for me only made possible because of your generous store credits for answering questions on the forum.
Another $100 and I would have had to choose between a development kit and Roli rather than getting both, and I would not have been happy with the choice.
That being said, the impression I get ia that thise buying JD seem to have more disposable income, and he is still competitive with other highly functional huminoid robots, so maybe just starting with JD (who is also the loudest due to the need to hold servo positions) would be a good compromise (and offer the quieter servos individually in the store so Roli and Six owners could upgrade down the line).
Alan
DJ, if this isnt offered in the robots themselves, would you still offer them for sale on your website as a DIY product?
To answer your question, I would have bought stronger and quieter servos in the ones bought for the school. The sound isn't that loud in the ones that I got, but the one that Nomad had would have driven me crazy. I would rather pay more for the insurance factor than take a chance that I will get a noisy servo.
I am with @d.cochran. Would it be possible to have them sold separately then or as an upgrade kit in the store?...