The easiest part was building the hardware?
by David Kohanbash on December 13, 2021
A colleague of mine who wishes to remain anonymous recently heard somebody say that hardware was the easy part of robotics. In response to that he wrote this email/poem. (I am calling it a poem, he did not).
(I made a few small changes to protect anonymity)
I fully understand why many people think that designing and building hardware is not as “difficult” as sensor integration, debugging code and field testing. By virtue of the self-evident fact that the software team was “gifted” reliable hardware from the hardware team throughout the project.
It is DIFFICULT to design robust hardware using only your imagination and your mind’s eye!
It is DIFFICULT to continuously change and improve a design using old computers and buggy CAD software all the while keeping the changes archived and in order, updating VERY VERY DIFFICULT drawings and instructions.
It is DIFFICULT to create complicated drawings and instructions for machine shops to produce thousands and thousands of dollars worth of custom close-tolerance components.
It is DIFFICULT to anticipate failure points in a dynamic tough environment where systems cannot be over-engineered or under-engineered!
It is DIFFICULT to weld and then machine a chassis that runs straight and true!
It is DIFFICULT to not get burned while welding, hands sliced open and infected while machining or eyes lost forever.
It is DIFFICULT to design and build a properly constrained final drive system that does not prematurely fail.
It is DIFFICULT to procure, design and build custom wheels that look good, are strong and are lightweight enough to match the narrow parameters of the application.
It is DIFFICULT to spend countless hours, day in and day out, with very few days off in order to meet unrealistic deadlines.
IT IS VERY DIFFICULT to wait for students to design and build systems that deploy with a high level of reliability and then realize at the last minute that the students have not even been trying to design and build any kind of usable device at all!
IT IS EXTREMELY DIFFICULT to have an entire team anxiously waiting for you to have the confidence, wherewithal, skills, ambition and luck to successfully design, buy parts for, machine, wire and build a completely custom machine!
All of this above needs to be successfully completed simultaneous to attending meetings, deflecting criticism, training others, maintaining a personal life, overcoming illnesses and injury, keeping a car on the road, repairing a home and helping design multiple other robot projects to prevent their failures.
In conclusion, YES robot design, programming and testing is difficult, but please be reminded that hardware is also DIFFICULT.
Do you think hardware is difficult? Do you think it is easy? Do you have any good stories about this? Leave it in the comments below.
I also enjoy testing robots. To read more about robot testing see this link https://robotsforroboticists.com/field-testing-series-part1-why-test/
Featured image source: https://www.everypixel.com/image-11284522938087187058
Comments
Beautiful and relatable poetry!
It is EASY to take a 10,000-foot view of pretty much any role and see it as simple. In reality, most jobs are endlessly complex when juggling multiple commitments and maintaining proper documentation.
I generally function by this rule/ quote
” BUILDING AND FIELDING ROBOTS IS HARD. Don’t think its not, don’t think your part is the hardest, because its all hard, and it takes a team to do it at the top levels”
There’s no point arguing about whose domain is harder. Some projects will be bottlenecked by mechanical engineering challenges, others by intractable software problems.
With autonomous cars, the software is the hard part; with nuclear fusion, it’s hardware. Most of the time, it’s ALL hard!
I am totally agree with you every job have their own importance as you mentioned the work of hardware is difficult while designing and making of components is not as easy as we think. New innovation and reduces the sizes of hardware is really a fantastic job and it is an art to redesign in small sizes with new features. You have done a great job I really enjoyed this blog.