Post 8

I’ve set my mind to commit to a bunch of things this year.

1. Be a good partner and parent-to-be.
2. Get the day-job business into shape so it doesn’t cause sacrifices on point 1.
3. Do this project.

This blog isn’t about personal things (yet? / ever?). Except to say family and work is looking o.k., and I can put a small slice of my time into this.

So an update on where I’m at.

Firstly, It’s still happening. It’s just very much an in-the-background project.

I have written some 200 private journal articles since 2021. This is when I realised I wanted to try something more serious in the robot’s space and started working towards it.

The last 100 articles are since April when it would take the form of Robot Company.

8 posts, including this one, are now public

The next post was to be called “next steps” and discussed getting feedback, setting up a social media footprint or getting into technical details. None of these drafts, I’m all that happy about.

Anyway, I’ve decided to read over the last 100 posts to get baring on where I’m at.

In the meantime. Here is the first Journal post on Robot Company As I said in Your first public post is not that important one reason for this is to log some sort of history. … I never said it would be logged in order.

but first, a back story of history repeating:

April 2023

I had just several months of spare time on a Unity project. The idea is to make a gamified robot simulation game.

Basically: it’s a set of programming challenges. This one is simply to control your ball so that bumps the other balls out of an ever-shrinking arena The game comes with API interface so you can program your own solution in vscode or make some AI or whatever, in order to compete with other programmers in various leagues.

I set up a journal about that project and a code-repo with about 40 commits to it.
If you want the code, let me know.

The first journal post was sheer excitement about starting something new and fun.

A few months and 20 posts later, I was lost in the rabbit hole world of AI gyms and the various attempts people had made at realistic physics simulators.

In any case, this project was called “Simulator 3”. It was completely different in every way to Simulators 2 and 1 and the other robotics-orientated projects I hacking together before that.

But it was another defeat.

As such, I was sitting on the waterfront not sure what to do next.

It was a familiar feeling then, as it is now.

The difference was that I knew then that I needed to change direction. So, I did.

And, I wrote this next chapter as a personal journal note on April 24th 2023.

Yet another day 1

It's been a few years since I told myself that I would actually try and make an effort to go for a career in robotics.

I've drawn loads of sketches. I've had ideas that have bounced all over the subject.

• Various simulator concepts.
• Network solutions.
• Actuators
• Connectors.

Just general services to try and break into the industry.

Huge energy went into it.

A lot of notes and diagrams.

Programming for hours… but not for the hundreds that it actually takes.

Using contractors for concept work to try and get work done while I’m too busy.

A lot of learning and discovering.

A lot of excitement.

And then not getting anywhere significant at all.

What has stopped me has been not knowing where to take my ideas.

And a Stupid fear of being copied.

A parallel fear of under-committing, and one of over-committing at the same time.

Also. My plans have been so indirect.

To build a business to enter a market, to gain a network and credibility. and then to go for the personal target: to manufacture robots.

Today. Is another start-over.

But this time I'm going straight for it.

I'll just build my first robot and try and sell it.

Thanks to work, I know how to do it and how to make an entire factory from it.

So, bleh.. I'll just do it then.

But as a general starting point l, I'm going for a service robot. Specifically a “mobile manipulator”. Hopefully with 2 arms.

It will be on the floor. Move between rooms. Can roll up to a workbench. Carry and use a number of tools including interchangeable drills and driver bits.

It should be able to plug itself into a wall outlet for charging and long-term operation.

As a stretch goal, it should be able to move a chair into position and then climb up onto it.

A key component of the project is that I can rely on my personal experience and strengths in hardware, communication between electronics, movement synchronization and manufacturing

I'm going to avoid the challenges of being new. And just try and do something better.

And then a business model.

Yep. That was the entire first post.

And that’s how Robot Company started.

From humble beginnings to … well, still humble, continuations.

Shortly after, I did this next sketch which outlines the basic business model for a service robot that is manually controlled by a remote handler. (Rather than selling the robot to an end customer)

It’s a rather illegible scribble, but the idea is more or less the foundation for the customer journey that I put together some months later.

The last point, as written in crappy handwriting: “It doesn’t matter if others are doing it”.

There are a couple of philosophical ideas standing behind that statement. It’s an essay for another time.

But, the basic feeling of the day was that this direction is different from things I’ve worked on previously, in that I would always want to build machines, regardless of what anyone else is doing.

It's a bit like "I wanna go fast".

I want to build things that build things.
Obviously, there are issues connected to such basic justifications.

On that note, I give you the next post as a bonus.
Hint: It's another origin story.