Nori’s $1,688 Home Robot Lets Owners Train It for Chores

A household robot priced at $1,688 is being offered with an unusual catch: buyers may need to help teach it what to do. According to New Atlas, San Francisco-based Nori Robotics says its A3 machine can assist with cooking, retrieving items from a refrigerator, putting objects away, loading a dishwasher, folding clothes and pouring ingredients. The robot travels on a wheeled platform and uses two arms fitted with claws. Each arm can grip and lift a couple of pounds, while cameras and LiDAR help the machine navigate its surroundings. Nori says a full charge can provide up to eight hours of operation. The company also says that most of the robot’s parts can be 3D printed and replaced by owners, potentially allowing users to repair or modify the machine themselves. The A3 is not presented as a finished appliance with a fixed list of guaranteed abilities. Instead, Nori describes it as a platform for people who want to build and customize a robot. Owners can write code or use a desktop simulation to train the machine’s movements and actions. Completed training can then be packaged into skills and shared with other users through an online marketplace. That approach could extend the A3 beyond household work. In an example cited by New Atlas, the robot flips pages of sheet music while a guitarist plays. However, the report notes that details about the robot’s capabilities remain limited, and it is not clear how reliably the A3 will perform tasks without mistakes. Nori says its first batch has sold out and plans to assemble 100 more units at its San Francisco facility for shipment in the Northern Hemisphere’s fall. The company’s founder, Antonio Li, said the goal was to make capable humanoid hardware more accessible to developers, researchers and teams. The A3 is considerably cheaper than the other household robots mentioned in the report: Weave Robotics’ Isaac 1 is priced at $8,000, while 1X’s bipedal Neo is listed at $20,000. Unlike those machines, New Atlas notes, Nori’s robot may rely more heavily on owners to develop its abilities rather than arriving ready to perform a broad range of chores.