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Building a robotics research setup that lives next to my desk – dfdx labs

dfdxlabs.com · 5,940 words · saved by 1 readers

The first note in an independent robotics research project: a complete tabletop manipulation setup—industrial arm, two cameras, teleoperation, and a software stack built from scratch—for under €5,000.

By Matthias Plappert June 17, 2026 · 26 min read The finished setup in action: setting up a chessboard via teleoperation. Visible are the different camera feeds, the human operator, and the sensed robot state; the operator can switch between cameras. Robotics research has become cheap and accessible enough that small teams, and even individuals, can now do meaningful research on real hardware. There are two reasons for this. First, capable robot hardware has become dramatically more affordable: the physical setup below uses an industrial-grade arm, two cameras, and a full teleoperation setup w

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