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GripperStanford / Columbia / Toyota Research Institute2024US

UMI Gripper (Universal Manipulation Interface)

Handheld, trigger-activated 3D-printed parallel-jaw gripper with a GoPro and side mirrors for in-the-wild demonstration collection, with policies deployable on robot-mounted grippers.

researchDIYL2 Sim-verifiedbuildable

Difficulty index

4.1/13
4.1
Index breakdown
Classgripper+1
Cost$946 BOM+1
DOFunknown · midpoint+1.5
Parts37.519999999999996 parts+0.6
How the index works

Specimen photographs

4 items
  • UMI Gripper (Universal Manipulation Interface) studio render, three-quarter front view
    Studio render of the published MJCF, the model's zero pose. Geometry only; colours are the model's own materials.Rendered by Hyperspawn from mujoco_menagerie/umi_gripper (MIT) · Hyperspawn render · source
  • UMI Gripper (Universal Manipulation Interface) studio render, side view
    Side view of the same MJCF render, the model's zero pose.Rendered by Hyperspawn from mujoco_menagerie/umi_gripper (MIT) · Hyperspawn render · source
  • 4 s turntable of the MJCF studio render.Rendered by Hyperspawn from mujoco_menagerie/umi_gripper (MIT) · Hyperspawn render · source
  • UMI - 3D Printing TutorialRobotics & Embodied Artificial Intelligence Lab · official video, embedded · source

Spec card

3/13 known
BOM total
$946 · 18/26 lines priced
Part count
37.519999999999996
Sensors
GoPro camera with side mirrors

Not in the registry: degrees of freedom, height, mass, payload, speed, runtime, battery, price, actuators, compute. Left blank rather than guessed.

What you learn building it

  • +Driving a servo or DC motor from a microcontroller
  • +Position vs. force control
  • +Linkage and jaw geometry
  • +Mounting an end effector to an arm or a bench
  • +FDM 3D printing: 13 parts
  • +Tools used: FDM printer with 0.6 mm nozzle, Ultimaker Cura, FDM printer with 0.6 mm nozzle (TPU-capable), M3 hex key, Screwdriver, Phone or PC screen for QR codes, Docker, Miniforge (mamba) +3
  • +21 assembly steps across 8 subassemblies
  • +Flashing firmware for GoPro HERO9 (GoPro Labs firmware + UMI settings QR), Weiss WSG-50 (Lua startup script umi/real_world/cmd_measure.lua), UR5e / UR5-CB3 (stock controller, remote control mode)
  • +Testing in simulation (URDF/MJCF) before touching hardware
  • +Running published learned policies

Openness

85/100
  • publicCAD
  • publicBOM
  • not publicFirmware
  • publicSim model
  • publicSoftware
  • publicPolicies

Score 85/100 computed from what is public: CAD 25, BOM 20, sim 20, firmware 15, software 10, policies 10. Software license: MIT.

Repos & models

MJCF ↗MuJoCo Menagerie ↗
SiteDocs

Build it

Has an ORP build package.
BOM total
$946
Lines priced
18/26
Parts
37.519999999999996
Steps
21
Version
0.1.0

8 lines have no price yet, so the real total is higher.

Largest BOM lines

Largest bill of materials lines
PartQtyUnit
GoPro HERO9 BlackHERO9 Black1$209.99
GoPro HERO9 Black (robot wrist camera)HERO9 Black1$209.99
Elgato HD60 X capture cardHD60 X1$147.34
GoPro Media Mod for HERO9 (HDMI out)1$79.99
GoPro Max Lens Mod 1.0 (ultra-wide lens for HERO9)Max Lens Mod 1.01$69.29
GoPro Max Lens Mod 1.0 (robot camera)Max Lens Mod 1.01$69.29
MGN9C 150 mm linear rail with carriageMGN9C 150 mm2$17.89
USB-C to USB-A cable, 10 ft2$13.49

Fabrication

  • FDM 3D printing13
Firmware repo
  • BOM prices are the Hardware Guide's Jan 2024 Amazon US figures; some quantities are fractions of a pack (0.5 PLA spool, 0.25 TPU spool, 0.07 grip tape roll). Mirror, grease, double-sided tape and tag quantities are blank upstream and set to 1 here.
  • Every gripper vendor link is Amazon US (reduced here to /dp/ASIN); there are no EU, CN or IN sources upstream. The guide specifies a GoPro HERO9 with Max Lens Mod 1.0; HERO9 and Max Lens Mod 1.0 availability may be limited now.
  • BOM is per gripper; bimanual collection needs two grippers with different ArUco tag sets.
  • Assembly steps come from the assembly video; there is no written step-by-step assembly doc, so screw placement per step is not documented in text.
  • Deployment hardware is expensive and partly unpriced: UR5e is by quote, the WSG-50 is €3875 (EUR, not converted). Franka and ARX X5 deployments are documented in separate files and repos.
  • The README's download command fetches cup_wild_vit_l_1img.ckpt but its eval command passes cup_wild_vit_l.ckpt (that URL returns 404).
  • SLAM (ORB_SLAM3) is the most fragile stage per the README; scene choice and marker size matter.
  • The software is only tested on Ubuntu 22.04. Code is MIT; the gripper mechanism is adapted from a Thingiverse Push/Pull Gripper and the soft finger from TRI, whose licenses are not stated in the repo.
  • The MuJoCo Menagerie umi_gripper model is a simplified model and is not referenced by the UMI repo.

Simulate

Load it in the browser simulator and train a policy before building.

Open on humanoidrobots.training ↗

Next rung

LeKiwi →SIGRobotics UIUC / Hugging Face LeRobot · rover · index 4.4

Easiest buildable rover, the next class up from gripper. Adds differential drive and odometry.

NotePresented at RSS 2024. Repo provides a pretrained checkpoint (cup arrangement). A simplified MJCF is in MuJoCo Menagerie (umi_gripper). The build guide (BOM, CAD, print settings, deployment) is the UMI Hardware Guide Google Doc; assembly is shown in video only. Code is MIT; the gripper mechanism and soft finger are adapted from third-party designs whose licenses are not stated.

Sources

  1. [1]MuJoCo Menagerie umi_gripperchecked 2026-09-24
  2. [2]UMI project pagechecked 2026-09-24
  3. [3]arXiv paperchecked 2026-09-24
  4. [4]Code repo (MIT)checked 2026-09-24
  5. [5]UMI Hardware Guide (BOM, CAD, print settings, deployment)checked 2026-09-25
  6. [6]UMI pretrained checkpointschecked 2026-09-25