Purism is a company that sells laptops, mini PCs, and smartphones that ship with free and open source software and privacy-focused features including hardware kill switches for cameras, microphones, and wireless radios.
Now the company wants to branch out into new territory: robotics. Purism has launched a crowdfunding campaign with a goal of raising $1.2 million over the next three months to fund the initial phases of research and development of MiMi, a “small remote controlled humanoid bipedal robot” that runs free/libre and open source software.
That sounds like a very ambitious project that will probably cost a lot more than $1.2 million in the long run. But Purism’s approach is interesting: the idea isn’t to build a fully autonomous robot, but rather one that can be remote controlled by a user using a “gaming-like application,” while sensors and algorithms on the device itself would help avoid objects, stand up after falling, and perform other basic functions.
If Purism does raise enough money to get started on this device, it sounds like the first few generations will most likely be toys for hackers and tinkerers. But eventually the company envisions the platform becoming useful for a wide range of applications including healthcare or security.
Just keep in mind this isn’t Purism’s first crowdfunding project – while the company got its start about a decade ago by crowdfunding its first laptop, that was a relatively simple thing to do as there were already plenty of laptops capable of running GNU/Linux distributions. But then Purism launched another crowdfunding campaign in 2017 for its Librem 5 smartphone.
It took two years for the company to begin shipping an early version that was very rough around the edges, and another year before mass production models began to ship, and many customers who had placed a pre-order ended up waiting several more years for that phone to arrive. It wasn’t until 2023 that the Librem 5 hit “shipping parity,” meaning that orders placed today should ship within two weeks.
All of which is to say, even if Purism meets its crowdfunding goals for its MiMi campaign, it could be years before the company is ready to ship anything to backers… if it ever does.
So far the project has had a bit of a mixed reaction in the Purism Forums, where folks have posted a mix of concerns, questions, and enthusiastic comments.
