Mercury X1 wheeled humanoid robot combines NVIDIA Jetson Xavier NX AI controller and ESP32 motor control boards

Elephant Robotics Mercury X1 is a 1.2-meter high wheeled humanoid robot with two robotic arms using an NVIDIA Jetson Xavier NX as its main controller and ESP32 microcontrollers for motor control and suitable for research, education, service, entertainment, and remote operation.

The robot offers 19 degrees of freedom, can lift payloads of up to 1kg, work up to 8 hours on a charge, and travel at up to 1.2m/s or about 4.3km/h. It’s based on the company’s Mercury B1 dual-arm robot and a high-performance mobile base.

Mercury X1 specifications:

• Main controller – NVIDIA Jetson Xavier NX
  • CPU – 6-core NVIDIA Carmel ARM v8.2 64-bit CPU with 6MB L2 + 4MB L3 caches
  • GPU – 384-core NVIDIA Volta GPU with 48 Tensor Cores
  • AI accelerators – 2x NVDLA deep learning accelerators delivering up to 21 TOPS at 15 Watts
  • System Memory – 8 GB 128-bit LPDDR4x @ 51.2GB/s
  • Storage – 16 GB eMMC 5.1 flash
  • Camera – 2x MIPI CSI camera connectors
  • Networking – Gigabit Ethernet port
  • USB
    • 1x USB 3.2 2.0 (10 Gbps)
    • 2x USB 2.0 interfaces
  • Other I/O – 2x UART serial ports
• Left & Right Arm Sub Controller
  • Wireless MCU – Espressif ESP32 dual-core microcontroller @ up to 240MHz dual core with 520KB SRAM, Wi-Fi, dual-mode Bluetooth
  • Storage – 4MB
  • LED Display – 5×5 RGB LED matrix
• Display (head) – 9-inch touching screen
• 3D Camera – Orbbec Deeyea
• Audio – 4-mic array with up to 5-meter range, 180° pickup
• Communication Interfaces – CAN Bus/WIFI/Network port/Bluetooth/USB serial port
• IO – 24V 6x Input, 6x Output
• Sensors – LIDAR, Ultrasonic Radar, 2D Vision
• Degree of Freedom – 19DOF
• Repeatability – ± 0.05mm
• Drive Motor – High-performance direct drive motors
• Maximum Operating Speed – 1.2m/s
• Maximum Climbing Angle – 15°
• Storage Space – 15L
• Power Supply – Battery good for up to 8 hours of usage
• Supply Voltage – 24V DC
• Dimensions – 1.18m high
• Weight – 55kg

The Mercury X1 wheeled humanoid robot can be programmed with Python and ROS 1/2 (Robot Operating System), and Elephant Robotics provides robot driver libraries installable through PyPI for querying joint angle data, Cartesian coordinate data, etc., and an RVIZ simulation environment for ROS1 and ROS2, plus a range of hardware drivers and software libraries.

The documentation has instructions on how to get started and a few demos/tutorials for QR Code Recognition and Grasping, Spatial Movement, Mobile Grasping, and Keyboard typing. I could not find anything about the ESP32 firmware and all instructions are high-level Python or ROS code or commands. I also feel the documentation could be improved as things like specs seem incomplete, and while the product page mentions a “Mercury API is a C++ control interface”, it’s nowhere to be found in the documentation.

The Mercury X1 can be purchased on Elephant Robotics for $15,999 US, which happens to be the starting price of the Unitree G1 2-legged humanoid robot with NVIDIA Jetson Orin, but lacking any programming guide as the Unitree robot looks to be configurable through a mobile app only. It’s also possible to purchase a subset of the Mercury X1 with the Mercury B1 with the upper body only (i.e. without the mobile base) for $11,999 US, or one Mercury A1 7-DOF robotic arm for $4,999 on the same page.

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