# The Design of Stretch: A Compact, Lightweight Mobile Manipulator for Indoor Human Environments

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2109.10892 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.10892/

## Key facts

- Cited by 40 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 22 Sep 2021.

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 40)

- [Human-to-Robot Imitation in the Wild](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.09450/) (2022)
- [Behavior Generation with Latent Actions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.03181/) (2024)
- [The Surprising Effectiveness of Representation Learning for Visual Imitation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.01511/) (2021)
- [Navigating to Objects in the Real World](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.00922/) (2022)
- [HomeRobot: Open-Vocabulary Mobile Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.11565/) (2023)
- [On Bringing Robots Home](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.16098/) (2023)
- [HM3D-OVON: A Dataset and Benchmark for Open-Vocabulary Object Goal Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.14296/) (2024)
- [PoliFormer: Scaling On-Policy RL with Transformers Results in Masterful Navigators](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.20083/) (2024)
- [FLaRe: Achieving Masterful and Adaptive Robot Policies with Large-Scale Reinforcement Learning Fine-Tuning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.16578/) (2024)
- [Navigating to Objects Specified by Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.01192/) (2023)
- [SPOC: Imitating Shortest Paths in Simulation Enables Effective Navigation and Manipulation in the Real World](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.02976/) (2023)
- [Retrospectives on the Embodied AI Workshop](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.06849/) (2022)
- [OK-Robot: What Really Matters in Integrating Open-Knowledge Models for Robotics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.12202/) (2024)
- [MoManipVLA: Transferring Vision-language-action Models for General Mobile Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.13446/) (2025)
- [Harmonic Mobile Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.06639/) (2023)
- [UniTeam: Open Vocabulary Mobile Manipulation Challenge](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.08611/) (2023)
- [FindingDory: A Benchmark to Evaluate Memory in Embodied Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.15635/) (2025)
- [Selective Perception: Optimizing State Descriptions with Reinforcement Learning for Language Model Actors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.11922/) (2023)
- [Seeing the Unseen: Visual Common Sense for Semantic Placement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.07770/) (2024)
- [Towards Open-World Mobile Manipulation in Homes: Lessons from the Neurips 2023 HomeRobot Open Vocabulary Mobile Manipulation Challenge](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.06939/) (2024)
- [ForceSight: Text-Guided Mobile Manipulation with Visual-Force Goals](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.12312/) (2023)
- [USA-Net: Unified Semantic and Affordance Representations for Robot Memory](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.12164/) (2023)
- [Fast-SmartWay: Panoramic-Free End-to-End Zero-Shot Vision-and-Language Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.00933/) (2025)
- [Evaluating Continual Learning on a Home Robot](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.02413/) (2023)
- [ObjectReact: Learning Object-Relative Control for Visual Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.09594/) (2025)
- [Spatial-Language Attention Policies for Efficient Robot Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.11235/) (2023)
- [Affordance RAG: Hierarchical Multimodal Retrieval with Affordance-Aware Embodied Memory for Mobile Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.18987/) (2025)
- [Safe and Interpretable Multimodal Path Planning for Multi-Agent Cooperation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.19304/) (2026)
- [LangMap: A Human-Verified Benchmark for Hierarchical Open-Vocabulary Goal Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.02220/) (2026)
- [SpatialAnt: Autonomous Zero-Shot Robot Navigation via Active Scene Reconstruction and Visual Anticipation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.26837/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Mobile manipulators for indoor human environments can serve as versatile devices that perform a variety of tasks, yet adoption of this technology has been limited. Reducing size, weight, and cost could facilitate adoption, but risks restricting capabilities. We present a novel design that reduces size, weight, and cost, while supporting a variety of tasks. The core design consists of a two-wheeled differential-drive mobile base, a lift, and a telescoping arm configured to achieve Cartesian motion at the end of the arm. Design extensions include a 1 degree-of-freedom (DOF) wrist to stow a tool, a 2-DOF dexterous wrist to pitch and roll a tool, and a compliant gripper. We justify our design with anthropometry and mathematical models of static stability. We also provide empirical support from teleoperating and autonomously controlling a commercial robot based on our design (the Stretch RE1 from Hello Robot Inc.) to perform tasks in real homes.