Intel 3D Printed Robot Available To Consumers Later This Year

Need an assistant to do your bidding? You may soon be able to make one yourself, thanks to Intel Corp. (NASDAQ:INTC), which aims to bring its 3D printable robot kit to the market by the end of the year.

Resident futurist Brian David Johnson introduced Jimmy, a demo version of the robot at the Re/code Code conference in California Wednesday. Anyone with access to a 3D printer will be able to download and print the hardware designs online once the kit is officially launched, he noted. While consumers will be able to print most of the parts for the robot, electrical parts such as the processor and wires will be provided with the kit, which will be available for purchase at 21stCenturyRobot.com.

A consumer version of Jimmy, which utilizes Intel’s Edison low-cost system on a chip (SoC), is expected to cost around $1,600. A more powerful research version with an Intel core i5 processor may run as high as $16,000, according to Re/code. Intel hopes to eventually bring the cost of the consumer robot to less than $1,000.

Besides printing the robot, which is a marvel in itself, users will eventually be able to create and download apps and features to program and customize their robot to do different things, such as tweeting and dancing.

In addition to the Jimmy robot design, several other designs are expected to be available among the kits going on sale later this year.