This is absolutely not my area of expertise, and I can't fully vouch for how well it works, but I was looking for a similar solution for consistency across website graphics and came across this walkthrough for consistent game assets:
This might be a sub-strategy of the broader manufacturing technique called “binning” in which products of varying quality, size/weight, performance, or some other variable parameter are sorted for later re-combining into similar groups (often to result in different product “grades”), or dissimilar groups to achieve a more uniform total, by average.
Reminds me of the "Exact Instructions Challenge" videos where kids write instructions for some everyday task - like making a PB&J sandwich - and parents, hilariously, follow the instructions verbatim.
As a mechanical engineer absolutely obsessed with Lego at a young age, I’ve recently (ie, when I could afford to start buying Lego again!) had to reconcile what I previously enjoyed about building with what I enjoy now.
As a child, the joy of building was in part the satisfaction of following granular directions to see something awesome emerging step by step, and in part the joy of playing with the sets. I was immersed!
Now, I think of them in part as essentially 3D puzzles and, in part, just curios… I like looking at them. Perhaps I’m subconsciously craving that unbound creativity I had as a child?
Thing is, in my work, I get to materialize physical, mechanical things with machining and 3D printing and welding etc. I thought I would, but haven’t found myself designing and building new creations with Lego. Perfectly content following the instructions and putting it up on the shelf to admire!
Seems like an open-source/DIY or kit (requiring some assembly) for educational applications is great in the context of a class or project where building/fixing/upgrading the robot is the point, and where 3D printing is readily available.
If the main purpose is for the robot to do something - the DIY approach is more likely to suffer issues that, without support, may discourage students because they're fussing with/fixing the bot instead of doing the thing.
Out of curiosity, what's the $40k kit you mentioned?
Educational packages are all over the place (some seem to be price-gouging, frankly) but the low-end (in terms of payload + reach) of commercial/industrial cobots is getting pretty affordable.
You're completely right about the DIY vs. Industrial issue. And the reality is that I need both, a DIY solution to teach students "this is how they work, these are the fundamentals, this is how to fix them/change them/operate them." And I also need one that can be hooked up to other machines, and able to be a true industrial robot (not so much with weight capacity, but with reach), and be a true integrated system to show students: "That other one was a toy, now here's how to use a real one in industry."
But I basically now operate in Bureaucratic Hell, and I have to figure out a way to get the equipment to teach my students. And due to changes in how my organization operates, ironically enough, I've found that getting the "professional/educational/industrial" products is often not the right decision.
One of the worst things that can happen is that we buy a $250,000 piece of equipment. The administration will never ever budget for the cost of maintenance, consumables, tooling, training, everything else required to successfully operate it. Within a year, you're stuck with a $250,000 piece of equipment sitting in a corner collecting dust, that is always shown to VIP's on tours as the latest in greatest in what we offer. Oh, and it's so expensive, we're not going to allow students to use it anyway, because we can't let them break it.
And it's amazing, they won't have funding for that $100 tool I need to teach the students and use everyday, but every year they'll manage to find $100,000 to spend, a week before the end of the fiscal year, which we have to spend immediately, but it can only be spent on certain items, like the things that I don't actually need. Welcome to public technical education in America. (Sorry, obviously, you unintentionally touched a nerve.)
But if I can get something that costs $2000, well, I can either fix it myself, or better yet have the students do it I will take something that I know is sustainable, that students can actually put their hands on and operate over that white elephant every day of the week.
In reality, this is all moot. No matter the cost, my budget is effectively zero at the moment. But I can hope.
The $40k was a Universal Robots UR3e I believe. The vendor put it on a cart as a portable, self-contained system.
That is basically why made this robot. During my high school days we were 30 students on ONE old mitsubishi robot that was pain to program and was dangerous. On collages it was "oh we have 2 40000 euro robots but they are too expensive for students". So in both world we were mostly on simulators and simulators suck. I started with faze4 robot that was financed by my college but it was too large robot and i did not write any good software for it. More impressive thing than mechanical part or PAROL6 is its software and GUI. It is made for easy programming, has build in scripting language, jog control, error logging... Also i plan to port all my robots to that software and in the future make it universal for any robot. So you get a PCB that can communicate with the PAROL6 software, configure your robot kinematics and you are up and running.
My company designed and built the first few prototypes for a startup, Throne Labs, who deploy prefab, off-grid, (semi-)publicly-accessible (you have to have their app) bathrooms.
Seems like they solved some core problems: finding suitable sites and partners, using semi-permanent modules that don't require [quite as] complicated/slow/expensive permitting and utility tie-ins, and some clever ways to get them re-stocked and cleaned regularly using gig labor (I always understood this to be the biggest challenge for offering public bathroom - labor cost of cleaning and resupply.)
They moved on to a higher-volume producer so I've been out of touch on their progress, but I thought it was a interesting solution in the face of what I learned to be outrageous expenditure - $300k, $500k(!) - on municipal bathrooms that quickly go defunct or get destroyed, and a lack of public restroom access during the pandemic.
During the project I learned a lot about how rideshare and package delivery companies just assume stops with restrooms are available on the routes (I'd love to hear what the actual company training/guidance says! It's easy to find stories about Amazon drivers peeing in bottles etc...)
I also gained a lot of empathy for people who have more frequent and urgent bathroom needs than my own - having trust in availability of facilities can make a world of difference!
We turn shipping containers into microfactories that can be deployed anywhere on Earth. We also retrofit containers for all kinds of fun modular commercial, industrial, and even residential purposes.
I have no affiliation and no idea what the current status of their effort is, or if they are working with orcas specifically, but this group has crossed my radar a few times:
It may seem cheesy and somewhat simplistic at first, but after you get over the cutesy anecdotes and jokes, the book/method "Slicing Pie" by Mike Moyer has been a very helpful resource for me during several very early-stage bootstrappings.
It really helped contextualize the different types of contributions co-founders and early employees will bring to the table, and is a helpful transition into the world of stocks and equity for those who are less familiar.
I bought copies for all involved and we worked through the calculations together, resulting in equity splits that have so far been low-drama.
https://runware.ai/blog/creating-consistent-gaming-assets-wi...
Maybe helpful?