Overview

The NORI A3 comes from US startup Nori Robotics in San Francisco and has been on sale since late summer 2026. The pitch behind it is unusually direct: founder Antonio Sitong Li, formerly a robotics researcher at Columbia University, does not see intelligence as the bottleneck for household robots, but rather price. Accordingly, the A3 costs 1688 USD and is assembled in San Francisco. Delivery is scheduled for fall 2026.

Design

The A3 is deliberately not a biped. On a square wheeled base measuring 45 by 45 centimeters sits a three-stage telescoping column that adjusts the robot's working height between 69 and 145 centimeters. Attached to it are two slender arms, each 55 centimeters long, with seven plus one degree of freedom. Combined with the column, this yields 19 degrees of freedom across 16 joints. The whole unit weighs 20.4 kilograms. Each arm handles 1.5 kilograms, and the gripper fingers are made of flexible 3D-printed TPU. Important for context: the frequently cited 55 kilograms refers to the lifting force of the column, not the payload capacity of the arms.

Technology and AI

The processor choice is equally modest. Instead of power-hungry AI modules, a Raspberry Pi 5 runs onboard, which extends battery runtime to six to eight hours. Four RGB cameras in the grippers, head, and neck provide images at up to 30 frames per second, complemented by a lidar with a range of twelve meters. Force control works without expensive force sensors, instead reading the current from bus servos. The SDK is open under Apache 2.0 license. To be honest, the perception pipeline does not yet work completely on actual hardware—the A3 is today more of a developer platform than a finished household helper.

Market Significance

At this price point, the A3 enters a space where no dual-arm mobile manipulator has previously been found. Also noteworthy is the manufacturing argument: since the US Federal Communications Commission expanded its list of critical suppliers to mobile robotics in July 2026, Nori has actively promoted assembly in the United States. The company has five employees and emerged from the Y Combinator Summer 2026 batch. The manufacturer has not yet made statements about shipping to Europe.