Naver Labs AMBIDEX

What it's for

AMBIDEX from Naver Labs is a lightweight arm capable of moving at up to 5 m/s; table tennis is one of the tasks used to demonstrate it. The arm weighs just 2.6 kg, has 7 degrees of freedom (DOF) and a payload of 3 kg. The secret is the cable drive: instead of heavy gearboxes in every joint, the motors sit closer to the base and tendons carry the motion. That makes the arm light and, in a collision with a person, safe. The maker points to precision manipulation as the applications: assembly, kitchen work and playing table tennis. Control uses machine learning that adjusts the force, speed and trajectory of movement, and force and touch sensors let it sense contact. Over time the platform gained a sensor head, a torso and hips, moving toward a more humanoid form. AMBIDEX is a research platform, not a product: it shows the direction cobots and service robots may take. The basic concepts are in “What Is a Cobot and How Does It Differ from an Industrial Robot”, “Degrees of Freedom (DOF) in Humanoid Robots” and “Actuators in Humanoid Robots”; the category is cobots and the sectors are laboratories and universities.

Who it's for

AMBIDEX is for people who follow where robotics is heading: researchers, mechatronics engineers, students, cobot designers and companies that want to see what a safe, lightweight next-generation arm looks like.

It is not for anyone who wants to buy something: it is a Naver Labs research platform with no commercial sales and no public price list. Nor is it the answer for a company that needs a cobot for pallets or welding, since 3 kg of payload is too little. If you are looking for an arm for a lab or university, choose something available for sale, for example one of the alternatives described below. Before you compare specifications, read “How to Read a Robot Datasheet”.

Deployments

The maker does not disclose plans for commercialization or a presence for the technology in Europe. Worldwide the platform appears as a Naver Labs research demonstrator, showing tasks such as playing table tennis, assembly and kitchen work, but we have no named customers. What does work in this category are the arms and cobots available for sale, described in “Cobots” and in “Doosan Robotics: Cobots from the Korean Maker in Poland” and “FANUC CRX: The Cobot Series with 8 Years of Zero Maintenance”. Note that demonstrations of the platform are research in character and should not be mistaken for commercial deployments.

For a lab that needs an arm with torque sensors and an open interface, a good option is the Franka Research 3 from Franka Robotics: 7 axes, 3 kg payload, torque sensors in every joint, and about 116.3 thousand PLN in our catalog. The Kinova Gen3 (4 kg payload, 902 mm reach, about 135.7 thousand PLN) is a Canadian research arm; its cheaper sibling, the Kinova Gen3 Lite (0.5 kg), suits education. If you want a proven industrial cobot, the UR3e has a 3 kg payload and about 135.7 thousand PLN in our catalog. None of them has a cable drive like AMBIDEX. These are different philosophies: precision gearing instead of tendons. The choice depends on whether you need an open research interface or a ready-made cobot for production; the former is usually cheaper to integrate with your own code, the latter cheaper to maintain.

Naver Labs is the research and development company of the Korean internet giant Naver, operating since 2017 in Seongnam. AMBIDEX is its flagship robotics project: a lightweight arm (2.6 kg per arm), driven by tendons and designed for safe interaction with people. Over time the platform evolved, gaining a sensor head, a torso and hips, and is approaching a humanoid form while remaining a research platform. We do not have the exact dates of subsequent generations, and no events are recorded for this model in our catalog, so we do not list them.