Tips for Building and Deploying Robots

Re. infrastructure integration: it's always a cost-benefit analysis. I've worked at a robotics company where we integrated with doors and elevators. Doors was really easy, cost almost nothing, and didn't come with any regulations. Elevators, on the other hand, was a length process, required certified elevator technicians, and cost a lot of money. On the other hand, adding a manipulator to open manual doors is very difficult and costly (per robot), but adding a button-pusher for elevator buttons is not.

The post mentions several times how it&#x27;s both costly for adopter to add infrastructure to support robots but also how other forces can make that infra already there e.g. how it costs money to install wifi in a warehouse but handheld scanners led to wifi being in them anyway (which was great for the robots too).<p>This reminded me of a quote about the future of automated driving (paraphrasing):<p>&quot;We currently consider the following to be distinct and very different modes of transportation:<p>- car<p>- elevator<p>- train<p>At some point, those will all converge into a vehicle that can travel on roads (like a car), with other vehicles (like a train) and bring you up to a building floor (live an elevator).&quot;<p>This seemed somewhat true to me until I considered two things:<p>1. The smart phone did something similar with a phone, television, computer etc<p>2. There is a scene in the movie Minority Report that does exactly what the author of the original quote described. [0]<p>The combination of another convergence device AND a fictional visual of what that convergent device would like really hammered home what the future might look like.<p>0 - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=Vrxyr1CjiSM" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=Vrxyr1CjiSM</a>

&gt; If we are asking a customer or end-user to do something they wouldn’t naturally do already we are making it harder for them to use our product…<p>The iRobot product line barely works without rearranging and adapting all of your furniture and floor space.

Some good advice here!<p>Too often I&#x27;ve heard: why make a robot open doors with it manipulator, just install a door opener on the door! Fits the bill here exactly: making a better robot helps you scale. Only relatively recently that robots opening doors became a reasonable thing to ask fo, but not much robots yet that do this at scale I think.

This is solid advice, particularly #4 is the reason I have started building my own bots. I do have one question though, how to design the production pipeline such that it is easy to iterate on the bot design with minimal disruption?

Where does one get part-level information to qualify a supply chain as &quot;juicy&quot;?<p>Otherwise the first advice looks like a 1st-world solution that independent 3rd-world developers can&#x27;t deploy. Could early-stage companies even expect this from their investor&#x2F;connectors?

Are there any good blogs, communities, or Discords to get more into robotics? Specifically outdoor applications?