[hvasilev]

I've been trying to understand why robotics doesn't work for quite a while. It seems to me like the next logical field of radical innovation. I understand there are funding issues for startups, the expertise issues, the utility issues of the current robots themselves and the vast number of theoretical issues of the sub-fields themselves.

What I don't understand is why not every single hobbyist is not focusing on robotics. It seems to me to be the pinnacle of generalism and technical entertainment.

What I'm trying to ask semi-jokingly is: It is winter, where is your miniature, autonomous snow plow that you built yourself from scratch and why aren't you working on one?

[throwaway316943]

It’s hard and cross disciplinary. A snow plow needs real horse power, a snow blower might be better but still has a whole kettle of problems. Those problems exist in the real world where you can break things that you need to pay for. There’s lots of cool projects that would be fun to do but without a source of free money or parts they aren’t going to get done. Software is easy because all you need to do to get started it type mkdir and open a text editor. The solution for robotics is physical simulation with accurate modeling of real parts and chips. Make it as easy as opening an integrated game engine like Unity, drag and drop parts that you can either download or model yourself. Write some code and run. Print a part list when you’re done.

[TeMPOraL]

Also, laws and rules you have to follow, and generally other people. I'm pretty sure if I started clearing snow in my neighbourhood with a DIY snowplow, I'd get in trouble with the housing cooperative, as they're already paying someone else to do that (however shitty job they do). Police may eventually get involved too, as I'm pretty sure that operating a car-sized robot on a road is illegal in more than one way.

Now if I really cared about doing this, I could probably follow some legal procedures to get my snowplow registered, and I could probably convince the neighbours/co-op to let me play with it. But it would all fare better if I formed a company around it and enter the discussion as a legal entity. At which point I may as well start a real snowplow business - which is way beyond my hobby interests.

And this applies to a lot of meatspace innovation - unless you own (and not rent) a home with a large backyard, and confine the scope of your experiments to just your backyard, pretty much all interesting ideas I can come up with require enough red tape that it's not even worth it, unless you're doing it for money.

[throwaway316943]

This is why I’m hoping remote work continues as a permanent option. We need to get creative people out of the cities while still maintaining good connections among them.

[TeMPOraL]

The connection part is tough. I'm moving back to a major city because I found living in a small town for the past couple of years to be mind-numbingly boring.

[throwaway316943]

Yeah it’s not great depending on who your neighbours are. I think better transportation and better VR will be necessary if you want the option of living anywhere. Until then finding a town that has a thriving scene that you’re into is the only option.

[hrktb]

I wonder how far you tried robotics yourself, as in what is your frame of reference.

Here’s my framing: Setting aside sheer knowledge, building anything will require power, motors and parts.

Power is doable up to some point, buying batteries and plugin them is a low barrier with low risks (still need to care about them not burning though)

Motors are a matter of costs and learning what’s available and how to use them.

Then come the parts. Will you machine them ? That would be a CNC machine and it’s a rabbit hole needing space, money, time, material, learning and safety measures. The mild version is a 3D printer, but it’s still a significant cost, a learning curve, a dedicated place available for long hours with effective ventilation.

We’re pretty far away from a simple hobby anyone could try, compared to fishing or papercraft, or guitare, or even wood working. Basically that seems miles away from anything you would start out of boredom.

[albertzeyer]

Instead of CNC or 3D printing, couldn't you just use something simple as Lego or Fischertechnik? Or other kits? (Maybe depends on how big it is supposed to be, and what it is supposed to do.)

But also, I thought that you can get some pretty cheap 3D printers nowadays?

Instead of batteries, couldn't you just use a cable? (Depends how freely the robot is supposed to move around.)

I have seen some robotic kits you can buy, varying widely in what they contain, and the target audience (ranging from kids to semi professionalists), and the price (starting at 100€ or so, up to 10k€ or so).

[hrktb]

Lego bricks are fine, but you’ll still need to make custom parts to build anything mildly complex. In particular to make your motorization system hook to them (the native Lego system is pretty limited)

It depends on where you live, but the main cost of a 3D printer for me would be less the machine itself than the space and ventilation needed.

Friends who made the jump basically dedicated a room to making stuff so they can run prints overnight while ventilating (setting up a fume extractor is another option, it’s just a bit more investment in the “hobby”)

I see all of it as totally doable, but needs a serious level of dedication, time, space and money.

[sothby]

Some prefabricated unofficial Lego metal parts are listed on ebay. In the Drone space, lots of cheap diy options.

[PeterisP]

Because it requires either a team or an experienced multidisciplionary person - you need to do mechanic design and part fabrication and electronics and software.

Focusing on just one of these areas would be suitable for a hobbyist, but that's not really a practical option until/if you get a solid ecosystem of cheap and interchangeable components, which really isn't there; sensors and mechanical parts and tools cost a lot, and complete platforms even more, so if you want to work with anything interesting you generally have to do it as part of a lab or team, not as a lone hobbyist.

Also, there is a very long path to any gratification - it takes a lot of work on all the segments until anything starts working and you get some positive feedback; e.g. on the autonomous snowplow example, it would be a loooong road until the 'hello world' autonomous snowplow that's e.g. able to drive forward while the camera is showing all white, as that requires all your engine work and driving parts and electronic driving controls and camera integration to be in place, and if any of these things fails because you're not skilled enough, it just won't work at all. Contrast that with many hobbies where you can get some visible (even if sloppy) stuff done relatively early when starting out; robotics has a very high barrier of entry compared to other hobbies.

[thewarrior]

There is a place in the world where this is a lot easier. And that is Shenzhen China. You need to be in a place with hundreds of manufacturers of every little component who can then customize your order within days.

For this reason this place is likely to become a sort of Silicon Valley of robotics.

[mikewarot]

The problem with robotics, is the difference between a world of atoms and a world of bits.

When the plague hit, I was sucked into an effort to build a ventilator, I still have a pile of parts that were purchased for it, but the chassis fabrication never happened, so I had nothing to write code for, thankfully the need evaporated. I learned that it takes MONTHS to get motors and gear trains supplied if they don't happen to be in stock.

If you thought the 1960s world of waiting a day for your output deck to see if your program compiled and ran was bad... it's got nothing on the world of supply chains.

You can buy off the shelf components from Motion Industries, but they are out of the price range of hobbyists.

[ofrzeta]

What do you mean by miniature? I guess you need to have a certain physical size to make a snow plow work. Maybe the size of a lawn mower. Instead of starting from scratch you could get one of the robotic lawn mowers and try to modify it to plow snow on your street.

I think it will be hard enough to get it to navigate freely instead of relying on cables in the ground, which is what the lawn mowers use as boundaries of their world, as far as I know.

Here are some formulas to get started calculating the snow resistance force and the required vehicle weight :)

http://onlinepubs.trb.org/Onlinepubs/sr/sr185/185-038.pdf

[blt]

Significant robotics projects usually need a team of specialists and possibly expensive hardware. Hobbyist robotics is fun, but unlikely to achieve state of the art in anything. It is easier for a single person to make a meaningful contribution in fields like programming language design, graphics, etc.

[bserge]

It is very time consuming, and requires a lot of materials that need to be purchased and shipped, a workshop or at least a decent sized room with good tools (and good neighbours, I guess), and ideally a good location because getting all that stuff when you live in a less developed and less populated city is a major pain.

Basically, it's a serious time and money investment.