Stringman, an $800 open-source room scale gripper robot
Neufangled Robotics, a North Carolina hardware startup founded in 2025 by Nathaniel Nifong, lists Stringman at $795 on its website, neufangled.com. The robot hangs a 638-gram two-finger gripper from four lines that run to anchors in the ceiling corners. Four DM-H6215 direct-drive motors change line length to move the gripper through a room of 3 to 10 meters diagonal and 2.3 to 4 meters high. The company's 1.9 kg average payload applies to a 7 by 7 by 3 meter room, with up to 2.2 kg near the floor. Travel speed is about 0.4 m/s.
Computing happens off the robot. A user's own PC acts as the controller, while Raspberry Pi boards sit on the gripper and the anchors. Two anchor cameras record at 1920 by 1080 and 30 frames per second, and a wide gripper camera adds a lower-resolution feed. Setup uses 5 GHz Wi-Fi with QR codes, and clip-on tags mark drop-off points such as a laundry bin or toy box. Heise reports that the control stack uses Hugging Face's open LeRobot platform.
Neufangled publishes the mechanical CAD, PCBs and control software, and says the design is OSHWA certified. The robot can run air gapped on a local network. Its documentation calls it a public prototype. Calibration takes about five minutes, according to Cornford and Cross. Gagadget reported shipping to the US, UK, Mexico, Japan, South Korea, Vietnam and Taiwan, and cited a $965 price for an assembled unit, so buyers should confirm which configuration the $795 covers.
Why it matters
The pitch rests on cost structure. Neufangled argues that robot price tracks actuator count, and a four-motor cable system avoids the legs, wheels and multi-joint arms that drive up the bill of materials in mobile home robots. If that holds, the expensive parts shift toward perception, grasp reliability and installation, which is where AI teams have the most leverage.
For founders and investors, the open hardware and local-only control are the signals to track. Publishing CAD, PCBs and software invites clones and community forks, so durable value will have to come from software, data and service. Local inference also answers privacy objections that cloud-connected home cameras face. The caution is that the product is a self-described prototype, reported home-testing figures differ between outlets, and no sales volume or revenue has been disclosed.
Key points
- 1Neufangled Robotics sells Stringman for $795, which the headline rounds to $800.
- 2Four motors pay out lines from ceiling corner anchors to position a 638-gram gripper.
- 3The listed average payload is 1.9 kg in a 7 by 7 by 3 meter room.
- 4Hardware and control software are published, the design is OSHWA certified, and the robot can run air gapped.
- 5Compute runs on a user's PC, and the company describes the robot as a public prototype.
