https://www.wired.com/story/blue-the-robot/

In a tiny lab at UC Berkeley, next to the whirring 3D printers on the wall, in front of an old Persian-rug-patterned couch, stands Blue the robot. It’s a pair of bulky humanoid arms—only with pincers for hands—attached to a metal stand. Wielding a pair of VR motion controllers, I wave my arms around, and Blue follows me faithfully. It’s my own robotic doppelgänger, kind of like the human-piloted, monster-fighting bots of Pacific Rim, only way cheaper.

That’s the beautiful thing about Blue. Research on robots has for decades been hamstrung by extravagant costs—the popular research robot PR2, a pair of arms not dissimilar from Blue, will set a lab back $400,000. Blue’s reliance on 3D-printed components puts its price tag much lower, at just $3,000 in materials per arm, and the goal is to get the total cost, with manufacturing at scale, to $5,000 per arm. If Blue’s creators have their way, that price point will launch the robot into research stardom, forging a future in which Blue’s descendants do our dishes, fold our laundry, and pick up around the house. And who knows, maybe one day they'll fight giant monsters making a mess of San Francisco.