I hope this is the correct section to post this question. I’m a PhD student and mainly worked on industrial robots in my research. However, now I’m thinking of adding a mobile robot like Kabuki/ Turtlebot and an industrial robot arm (like ReactorX 200 Robot Arm) on top of the mobile robot. So I’m looking for a mobile robot that supports ROS1/ROS2 and is extendable, e.g. using a small PC (Xavier, Orin) to control it, connecting 3D cameras. So can you please recommend a couple of robots that fit the description?
If you plan to build an indoor mobile manipulator with an arm such as the ReactorX 200 Robot Arm then I think you have 2 options in the market.
TurtleBot 4 ships fully assembled with a Raspberry Pi 4B and ROS 2 pre-installed, plus an array of integrated sensors. It’s payload is 9 kg so you must verify that your robot arm + the objects that you plan to grasp is lighter than that.
In your post you said you want to add your own computer, in that case you could just purchase the iRobot create 3 that does not include a computer but exposes several sensors and command interfaces through ROS 2 topics. Create 3 Robot | iRobot Education
Other robots that I know support ROS2 are: Hadabot, Husarion, Rosbot, Nanosaur but they are very small robots and none of them is able to carry a robot arm. Other ROS2 robots like the Husarion Panther or Clearpath Husky are probably too big and also meant for outdoor operation.
Let’s wait what other users can say about this. Good luck with your research, I hope you find the robot that better suits your use case.