[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.