It sounded too cool to be true. Yet, after hearing the pitch from Dash Robotics, I found myself convinced that the technology had the potential to not only perform successfully in the marketplace at a decent price point, but could do so at a commercial scale that “cheap robots” have never before achieved.

 

Dash Robotics was founded at UC Berkeley by four Ph.D. students with a simple mission — to make robots cheap, lightweight, and fun to use. The breakthrough came when one of the founders realized that robot joints could be mechanically engineered and constructed in a completely different way.

Traditionally, robots large and small have come with lots of parts. Metal parts, plastic parts, pins and screws and joints that all have to be cast or injection molded, usually one by one. This adds cost and weight and rigidity, and that’s what makes building robots so expensive. The entry price point for even the simplest toy robot starts around $300 to $400.