It doesn’t exactly have supermodel good looks and it probably won’t win any events in the World Humanoid Games, but Nori L3 is an American humanoid robot that just launched today and will ship this fall for just $1,688, Nor Robotics founder Antonio Li announced this morning.
“We wanted to build the best robot possible for under 2K and in the US,” he said on X. “With this version Nori we think we’ve finally done it.”
Nori L3 can lift an astonishing 55 kilograms or 122 pounds vertically, and 1.5 kilograms (about 4 pounds) with arms extended. It has six to eight hours of battery life, a wheeled base, and a central body core that lifts and lowers its head and arms. It has 19 degrees of freedom, and can fetch food from the fridge, pour a drink, load dishes in the dishwasher and fold clothes.
Nori also comes with an app store, AKA the Skill Marketplace, where owners can share skills they taught their robots and install ones from others.
The first Nori shipped on July 21 of this year, and have been rolling (literally) off the assembly line since then, so this is not vaporware.
That said, you’re not getting a bipedal humanoid that you can go for a walk with, or that will do virtually everything you want done in your house or office. And, it’s not particularly fast. In addition, I’d expect that Nori will be a little bit delicate: it’s components clearly won a price battle, and might not include the highest quality actuators, joints, and parts that humanoids can get.
Caveats aside, this is a very cool home appliance for nerdy people (dare I say) who are willing to live on the cutting if not bleeding edge and can tolerate a less than perfect experience. (Let’s be honest: any humanoid you buy from any company right now will provide a less than perfect experience.)
The robots are made in America in the sense that they are being assembled in San Francisco. You can bet, however, that most if not all of the components have been sources overseas, likely from China in many cases.
That could change, of course, thanks to the FCC’s decision to ban future foreign robots. But that, in turn, could make the price skyrocket.
The company bills Nori L3 as “the most capable robot for $1,688.” Given that it has very little competition in that price bracket, they’re almost certainly correct. And what this does is provide hope that robots don’t have to be $150,000 to be fun, to do useful work, and to provide a training platform for physical AI.
And that even lower-cost robots (OK, bargain-basement robots) can be interesting.
At the sub-$2,000 price point, it’s a lot easier for just about anyone to make a spur-of-the-moment decision and welcome a humanoid robot into the family.
Other tech on the platform includes lidar so Nori can navigate the world safely, 4 720P cameras on the robots hands, head, and neck, plus a speaker and microphone for voice communication and commands. There’s also the Nori Lab laptop app for training and managing Nori.
If you want one, better hurry. Nori Robotics typically has small production batch sizes, with the second run on Nori L2 limited to 100 units. If the platform takes off and Nori is a success, expect bigger and better things – and more cost – from Nori L4 or L5.