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Comment by zer00eyz | Hacker News Reader

I always go back to GM and its first welding robots. They had to make changes to the construction and engineering process to optimize for those welders (and for them it was slow).

I assume that the current install process is fairly "human optimal". How much of that changes with your product to make it "automation" optimal? Were there small changes here for big wins? Or are you still using the same process with complex automation (the GM way), and do you see challenges arising from that?

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One of the coolest parts of our job is figuring out what tweaks we can make to the process to make things more robot-friendly!

One thing we're already doing that's different from human installers is the bay pre-assembly approach you can see in our demo video, where we build chunks of 5-9 modules on a tube and carry them out to the field. Ordinarily humans put up all of the tubes, then all of the brackets, then all of the modules. The pre-assembly approach allows us to do a bunch of work in a more controlled factory environment on a different part of the site.

Longer term there are other ideas we have, but since everything has to last for 30-40 years out in the field you have to be very strategic about making the big changes...

There was User Experience (UX) and then Developer Experience (DX). Now there could be Robot Experience (RX). I wonder which of the same principles would apply.

RX is called design for manufacturing. Nothing new.

I think of this as Rosie Jetson robotic development. In the Jetsons cartoon show, you can watch the robotic maid, Rosie, manually washing dishes like a human. Today, we have a dedicated device purpose built for dish cleaning that operates nothing like a human. What is the end state of a machine which can operate more efficiently without being built around the human pattern?

(Although, Wikipedia is telling me dishwashers already existed at the time of the Jetsons, so my analogy is bad, and I should feel badly).

If I want to wash 100 dishes I'll take a dishwasher. But if I want a single dish washed followed by watering a single plant followed by taking out the trash I'll take Rosie.

Humanoid robot has much more Jack of all trades potential.

So often I see the word robot used, when machine would be more appropriate.

What’s the difference between a machine and a robot? I’ve commonly heard “it’s a robot until it works, then it’s a machine”

There is no generally-agreed definition, but I would use the word "robot" only for machines that have manipulators (i.e. some equivalent of arms with hands; something similar to octopus tentacles or elephant trunks also qualifies as a manipulator).

Originally "robot" was used only for humanoids, but the only essential capability that distinguishes robots from earlier machines are the manipulators, so in all other respects they may not resemble humans or animals nowadays.

Maybe “an automated thing that moves to do stuff”. Generally there are manipulators and mobile robots like vacuums. An interesting edge case would be a CNC machine which has degrees of freedom similar to a pick and place robot but is seen as a whole static thing with moving parts. Also if the mobile platform transports people it’s usually not called robot.

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