the availability of good electric motors of every type, along with a number of new designs has blown this category wide open. between that, advances in small scale manufacturing and the wide availability of solid OSS tools developing systems like this have never been cheaper.
I have an idea for a circuit design and have multiple physical prototypes, board, case and all in weeks, without a team, without managing complex BOMs and without a purchasing dept.
its pretty wild how quickly we have gone from 200k six axis industrial arms to <$2000 home made versions with much of the same capability for scale.