Theme 1: Skepticism about real‑world capabilities
Many commenters doubt that the demo videos reflect genuine, reliable performance in everyday settings.
- jonplackett: “Can you be up front about its real capabilities. Are these videos of it eg tidying up real or just staged / cherry picked?”
- jdiff: “That video of it folding clothes would seem to hint at that. It's only able to awkwardly throw it into a pile, but they still included it. It's clearly a very cool project, but it suggests the claimed capabilities are more show than substance.”
- dvt: “Neat vision, but I can only imagine this thing literally fucking everything up. Like, knocking shit off my table, setting my kitchen on fire, bumping into things like an idiot.”
- micromacrofoot: “Nothing, none of these are good enough to do any home tasks reliably. These are all research/hobbyist devices that won't be interesting for another 5‑10 years.”
Theme 2: Price, business model, and long‑term sustainability
Discussion frequently returns to whether the $1,688 hardware price (plus optional software) can support a viable business, especially after seeing similar projects fail.
- TristanX: “Curious what the business model of this is to make the company sustainable. Asking that because I was part of the K‑scale labs community and sad to see it shut down due to the competition with low‑cost chinese robots.”
- mrnotcrazy: “We make money by selling the hardware for $1,688, with optional paid software on top.”
- Tepix: “Congratulations! That price point is really tempting.”
- mNovak: “I'm confused, is this a research device, hobby/tinker item, or consumer product? I don't mean to be negative, but making a sustainable business on a hardware race to the bottom sounds challenging.”
Theme 3: Openness, privacy, and user control
A strong contingent worries about internet dependence, data collection, and whether the robot will remain usable if the company disappears or changes its software policies.
- anonym29: “Does this require internet connectivity? If Nori goes out of business, can we keep using these? … Is there a privacy policy on your website for the robot itself? Is there any telemetry? … Is the software that ships on it totally open source?”
- mrnotcrazy: “Privacy would be a huge concern, I can't have this in my garage lab with all my stuff being sent back to your servers for computer vision tasks etc.”
- doodlebugging (using a hardened browser): “First visited under LibreWolf in a container window… I know privacy/security settings are maxed in this FF clone browser.”
- la6479: “How is teleoperation anything more than a glorified puppet master pulling the strings or a radio controlled toy car?”