Sawyer

Overview

Sawyer is a discontinued single-arm collaborative robot from Rethink Robotics, launched in 2015 as a higher-performance counterpart to the dual-arm Baxter. It featured 7 degrees of freedom, 4 kg payload, 1,260 mm reach, and embedded vision via a wrist camera and four peripheral cameras on the head display. Rethink Robotics sold the Sawyer product line to Hahn Group in 2018, which subsequently licensed it to Sawyer Robots, a division of Hahn Automation, for continued but limited sales. As of 2026, active commercial deployment of new Sawyer units is no longer occurring.

Key Specifications

• Payload: 4 kg
• Reach: 1,260 mm
• Degrees of freedom: 7
• Repeatability: ±0.1 mm
• TCP speed: up to 1.5 m/s
• Weight: 19 kg
• Software: Intera SDK (ROS-based), community maintained

The Series Elastic Actuators in all joints provided passive compliance, similar to Baxter, though the precision was higher than Baxter's design.

Software Support Situation

Official Rethink Robotics software support ended in 2018. The Intera SDK has been maintained by the research community with ROS drivers available on GitHub. No commercial software update path exists. Sawyer should be considered a research or educational platform in 2026, not a production deployment option. Integration with modern PLC systems or industrial fieldbus requires custom development.

Buying Used

Sawyer units appear on eBay UK, university surplus sales, and specialist secondhand platforms. Pricing ranges from £2,000 to £8,000. The primary buyers are universities and robotics developers. Check the wrist camera module for physical damage, as it is integral to the arm's sensing system. Confirm that the controller PC runs the Intera SDK and that the ROS workspace is intact.

Alternatives to Consider

• Universal Robots UR5e: Fully supported, comparable payload, production-ready.
• Franka Emika Panda (discontinued): More precise force sensing for research, also secondhand-only.
• Kinova Gen3: Active support, lighter weight, comparable reach.