I see a lot of you on this website are young 20 somethings with no future or a shit load of college debt

I'd call it autonomic

>maintenance
>power delivery
>processing
>programming
Robots aren't magic, you fag.
Nowadays robots already do all the farming for us.

We drive bigass tractors that handle bigass fields that all do one job each.

The more delicate harvesting that people don't want to develop robots for, it turns out that hiring Mexican labor is cheaper than R&D.

All that's left for the farmers to do on a farm is the scientific part of maximizing growth.

Yes but we do that on a large scale that only strengthens corporations and weakens individuals

it is essentially a pyramid.

syndicated robotics guilds would put the power back in the hands of the people.

we'd be able to own property and benefit from the labor of our robots whether than have corporations being the only benefactors of the robotic revolution.

And nothing you green texted presents a problem.

Does any one have any constructive feed back on the idea?

>Baxter is really slow but costs pennies on electricity making him cost effective
>Baxter, the $22,000 prototype, folds 8 shirts in the years then breaks

Why do you

Type every new

Thought in a

Paragraph

FAGGOT

there is still tons of profitable automation that can be done.
baxter is a consumer/vendor type robot and we wouldn't need those, we oculd specialize for every contract or task.
we could also invest in baxter

also

22,000 is pocket change.

bumping

All fun and games until the corporations use your technology and scale it up to make even more money and introduce regulations to block your endeavors.

The premise of a conglomerate of retards somehow creating a functioning robot-based economy is absurd, but sure, I'll take the bait.

Only a small fraction of people are competent at working with their hands and tools, much less designing, prototyping, and building robots of any sort (and that's not even getting near ones advanced enough to actually do what you're suggesting). There's a reason that corporations pay engineers the big bucks (relatively speaking) to design the machines that assemble products in factories. What you're suggesting wouldn't be putting power back in the hands of the people - it would just be shifting power to a new group of oligarchs.

In other words, it would be capitalism. You may not be aware of this, but that's actually our current economic system. Crazy how that works, innit?

>We all make our own corporations
...You are aware that this is literally how every giant corporation starts, right? This ain't rocket science. You want to make money, you find a niche to fill, build an empire off of it, and boom: new corporation with a new Mr. Shekelberg at the top of the ladder.

>Imagine a syndicate of robitist guilds owning land and securing their own futures!
If someone was running a successful corporation, why would they saddle themselves with a pack of potential imbeciles?

You clearly have not worked on robotic projects before. Parts can be expensive as fuck.

>22,000 is pocket change.
If you actually had enough money for $22,000 to be negligible, you wouldn't be writing this drivel on Veeky Forums.

t. industrial automation major

Hi. It's me again. How do you plan on coaxing the experts you would need to build the group's infrastructure? They would probably already be pretty high ranking in their field. Also what would someone have to do to become a full guild member anyway?

>and introduce regulations

It's the fact that the corporations have the militaries of the world in their pocket that makes them so dangerous.

We could start our own political party of technocrats that would represent the syndicate of robotics guilds

I'm game in a few years once I build up my capital. Get a throwaway email going and post it here so that we can all keep in contact with each other.

>Parts can be expensive as fuck.

that's because you aren't manufacturing them.
the mark up on technology is absurd simply because everyone thinks you are too awestruck to do it yourself.

what do you bring to the table?
I honestly don't trust anyone on Veeky Forums.

I just want people to think about this idea I have

>Also what would someone have to do to become a full guild member anyway?

I'm looking for a core group of visionaries that would decide these things.

A little under $400,000 in capital, along with experience in sales and management, but it's late and I'm browsing Veeky Forums for the heck of it, so I'll have to re-read your thread tomorrow to give you any worthwhile feedback.

By the way, I'd make this a long-term hobby if I were you. Plan things out on paper and run over those plans for a couple good years before you put anything into action. Also consider keeping your "'visionaries" as small a collective as possible so as to limit the possibility of others having the bright idea of stealing your work so that they can make an easy profit.

I'm afraid I don't post email to Veeky Forums, even throw away emails, I'm ultra paranoid, sorry.

The fact that you have so much capital and are still interested also makes me suspicious as you definitely don't fall into the "poor wageslave looking for finical freedom" camp
what interest do you have in all this?

maybe if you made an email and posted it here I'd reply to it, sorry for the inconvenience.

good advice.
but is years worth a planning really necessary?

I'm going to go out on a limb and postulate that you've never actually worked with robotics before. As fun as it would be to try building things from scratch, there's a reason that nobody fucking does that. The savings aren't worth the massive drop in quality and the massive increase in time necessary. Engineering doesn't work the way video games told you.

Yes.

I just figure once you have a manufacturing plant up and running for your parts it would pay for itself in the savings on parts.

Maintenance costs?

that's covered by the labor of your finished robot product since they are literally free labor minus the pennies worth of electricity they consume.

>How do you plan on coaxing the experts you would need to build the group's infrastructure?

I suspect we'd get our experts by offering them land holdings and equity in the company.

The major focus of the company is land holdings and and robots.

I'm gonna be McRobo

It almost sounds like you are producing things exclusively to use them for yourself instead of to sell them. Would all production also be owned collectively by the group's membership?

yes, we'd structure it as a guild. There would be seniority of course but everyone who contributes earns equity in the ownership of the guild and eventually can take land options.

I'm of the old school feudal mind set that promises of land are better than promises of just cash.

Our profits would be used to buy more land, to make more factories, to make more robots, who we lease out to the economy at large to siphon off it's capital to our guild structure.

The intent is to eventually give everyone robots that can work for them rather than robots working against the general public economically in the hands of a few corporations.

Cause we all know that once these corporations get there hands on free mindless efficient labor like robots they are going to drive the price of them up artificially and dramatically making them too expensive for the average citizen.

>drive the price of them up artificially a

meaning that they will figure in the benefit of free labor into the price rather than just the cost of producing the robot in the first place.
doing so means that a robot that costs 5000$ to build would sell for 50,000$

which I guess isn't artificially driving the price up but it still means that people could afford to have their own if they were given the means to build one themselves.

A syndicate of robotics guilds that you could apprentice with could do that.

A manufacturing plant producing... what exactly? Each part would require a unique assembly line, and each variation on each part would require variations in the basic assembly line. A factory that produces motors can't necessarily produce sensors, or actuators, or microprocessors, or any of the countless components that the modern world runs on. Hell, electric motors alone have a ton of variations that may need to be accounted for, depending on what's required.

Don't get me wrong, it's a cool idea. Unfortunately, it's also incredibly impractical.

>Each part would require a unique assembly line
,
Why not have assembly lines that can multiple different parts?
Why not build a whole new set of parts that are assembly line interchangeable?

You've heard of the concept of a universal constructor right?

Why not just buy a industrial metal 3D printer?

I've considered the feasibility of something similar to this. As I see it, you'd essentially first need to establish one primary source of operating income. Agriculture is the most apparent, but really it could be almost anything. Just something to establish enough income to expand and pay all necessary expenses. Once a passive income is established, you can worry about expanding into more types of crops or another industry, and it may also be helpful to optimize maintenance to be done as much as possible by robots themselves.

Considering it now, I am not even sure if it must be done with everyone in one place. It could be done remotely with ownership shares to apportion the profits regardless of geographic location.

But the place of manufacturing would be a physical geo-location, and we'd all need to be close to it to work on the bots and whatever we were using the bots for.

explain how we could all work together while being physically separated by large distances?

I think it'd be a neat hobby, though I'm not convinced it'd be the best use of time or capital. Mostly, I want to watch and keep up to date with your project to see if it works out.

(And I'm hardly a Wall Street millionaire.)

Care to tell me how you would design an assembly line that can assemble a three-phase AC motor, then turn around and weld together the chassis of your farmbot or whatever? They're completely dissimilar processes. At that point you're building two separate assembly lines, mashing them together, and proclaiming them to be a single unit.

Manufacturing processes don't work like Lego bricks and different variations on the same part are almost never interchangeable. You can destroy a $10,000 machine by accidentally putting the wrong $3 fuse into a slot.

Now tell me how quickly that can actually print components. Better yet, tell me whether or not it can print multiple metals in the same project, insulate and print wires around other components, print both plastic and metal, print circuit boards, and place and solder components while printing.

Yeah, if you're going to do it, do it right.

Also, I used a burner email site to come up with this: [email protected]

>though I'm not convinced it'd be the best use of time or capital

Once automation becomes cheap and universal enough that's the end of our current economic system.

we are talking virtually free slave labor for anyone who can afford it for literally any job.

see

>pipe dream, the thread

cool, I'll email you sometime soon to establish contact and I will let you know when I'm coordinated and have a plan established and am looking for investors.

I'll also give you regular updates on my progress if it isn't too much of a hasal for you

wtf am i even reading here
fuck you op

>Now tell me how quickly that can actually print components. Better yet, tell me whether or not it can print multiple metals in the same project, insulate and print wires around other components, print both plastic and metal, print circuit boards, and place and solder components while printing.

I honestly don't see why it couldn't

it'd be the greatest innovation in manufacturing since the assembly line.

Manufacturing, design, and investment don't have to be linked, at least not in the long-term. Perhaps it would be needed for the engineering to come together to ensure everything works, but ideally only a few members would need to be on-site to oversee the operation.

I'm just not sure there's a need to be there year-round. Especially if the plan is to go into something like agriculture. It just seems like there's a decent amount of downtime while waiting for the results of the harvest.

this made me laugh.

>these ideas confuse me
>arrrgghhh!!!

I see what you're saying.
Honestly the whole guild concept and living together is a romanticized concept.

In reality It would turn out to be an all purpose robotics company with an apprenticeship program.
and of course all the down time would be used to develop other products.

One size fits all machines are not necessary at all. PCB manufacture and pick-and-place machines are both solved problems.

Manufacturing electrical components in-house doesn't make sense, but the rest can be done.

AINT NOBODY READIN ALL THAT SHIT NIGGA

>millineal detected

It would be, if it actually existed.

There are a lot of things you could manufacture in-house, yes, but it would be a ridiculously massive investment in uncertain products. Consider how many unique parts would be required for a single machine designed to pick crops or whatever OP was thinking of. Now consider how many types of machines would be necessary for the second industrial revolution we're talking about.

They wouldn't be manufactured in house at first but when the money was there the investment should be made.

Sure, sounds good, but don't feel the need to consistently report about what you're doing. If anything, my advice to you is to spend time first making sure you have a practical way to implement your idea. Once that's done, try to run it by experts or others that you trust to critique it. had some very good points, and these are all things you'll need to consider before even starting your company up.

>down time would be used to develop other products

That's true enough... Once the planting and harvesting machines are done you can work on processing or something to automatically negotiate the sales or order new supplies. Plus if living as a "guild" would add eligibility for discounts from bulk, it could be more economical to live on-site.

I guess it would come down to a philosophical decision: is it simply a business, or an experiment in post-scarcity economy? The latter certainly is a far more interesting thought, but would be a less efficient society.

it starts as a business with the goal of experimenting in post scarcity.

definitely an experiment in post-scarcity though.

I don't advocate that all parts should be manufactured in-house; things like bearings, gears, general hardware and such should probably be outsourced (though potentially selling that hardware could be part of the business model, alternatively) but the fabrication of larger parts from steel or aluminum should be done on-site. Design should reduce the difficulty of that manufacture as well as possible.

and if it doesn't pan out robotics are going to be a huge business in the coming decades.

robotics and the internet of things is gong to be huge.

call me a sci fi geek or whatever you want but were entering the animatrixs 2nd renaissance in 5 decades or less imo

to put into perspective the hurdles you are up against.. the company i used to work for purchased a robotic pallet-stacker and it cost $300,000 for a single unit.

Unless you have insanely retarded venture capital, its not gonna happen

Solid metal parts could be welded by hand initially, but moving parts (like servos and actuators) and good sensors would require either individual assembly lines or purchase from an external supplier, which would not be cheap either way.

Honestly, my biggest objection stems from the fact that OP has no idea what hurdles are actually in his idea's path because he hasn't actually done any research.

that just tells me there are companies out there willing to buy my 100,000 dollar robotic pallet stacker for 300,000 dollars

You're right, I have done literally zero research, I'm putting this out there because it's such an exciting prospect socio-economically

That doesn't mean i'm not going to put in the work to know what I'm talking about though.

I really just want to find people excited about the idea.
The reaction has been mostly positive in this thread.

how can you make your robotic units, with zero venture capital? You think nobody hasnt tried it yet? Are you Elon Musk? Mind you, he started out with a shit-ton of his own paypal capital

>You think nobody hasnt tried it yet?

Nobody I've ever heard of. Less competition.
I'll find investors. I can raise money, it's not a problem.

I'm not advocating for that either. You'd have to be batshit crazy to try to do all that in-house. Those specialized parts would be ordered in. As long as they're purchased with funds produced by the organization, I don't see it as a cheat.

My personal vision of this isn't complete autonomy, but financial autonomy. The machines should generate enough money to be effectively post-scarcity, but relying on that interface with the outside world to give access to the full range of resources.

well thats good if you can raise venture capital.. mind you.. ever heard of MonDragon? It has a similar system of company ownership you proposed and its been around for 50+ years.

If you need a good cook onsite who has 2 years of highschool engineering, I'd love to have garden-grown ingredients to work with
This sounds like a lot of fun

>MonDragon?

no, never heard of them, what do they do?

they produce various goods, but theyre not robotic oriented like you, but similar business model

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation

well they seem quiet successful.
I think a robotics company with this model would be quiet successful as well.

with enough capital and good management, i dont see why not

Your idea of how the enterprise would function is much more realistic than OP's, given that OP suggested manufacturing everything from scratch rather than spend money on expensive parts.

Your enthusiasm is laudable, but the fact that you haven't even the slightest clue about what you're talking about detracts from your presentation. Take classes on industrial automation, read up on how factories work, look into the financial side of things, THEN pitch a hair-brained scheme that might actually succeed.

Okay, see, this is what I'm talking about. Money is a problem, and the fact that you're thinking as if money is no object tells me that you don't know shit about finances either. Do some research, then talk about ideas.

Trust me, take a step back and gather information. The sooner you approach things logically, the sooner your ideas start actually gaining some traction.

I'm 30. And you spelled millennial wrong.

Here's a fun tip: People who actually wanna learn stuff go pick up books and read them. People come here mostly as an escape.

So perhaps you could consider that next time you're thinking of typing a whole fuckload of shit.

jesus christ try formatting your posts better all of that could be put into 1-2 blocks of text

>These corporations are soon going to be turning to automation which will completely eliminate us from the job market

They aren't. Using machines more often that not means leasing them and most companies do not want to be totally beholden to another company's contracts. There's a reason why free trade happened instead: third worlders can't fight companies, but equipment suppliers can. Deere and CAT are both effectively rentiers on top of the agribiz industry who are totally reliant on them.

Automation simply isn't possible in environments where there is a surplus of labor. That's why all large companies abuse H-1 visas and lobby for looser immigration laws. They want jobs to be competitive, not the other way around.

also,

>Imagine a syndicate of robotist guilds owning land and securing their own futures!

I can pic related

It sounds like Google where they want to replace everything in your house

Even then, there's no way we'd beat a country like China with their ability to produce and manufacture robots even if crappy

You have no idea what you're even proposing.

You want a bunch of
>young 20 somethings with no future or a shit load of college debt
to
>make our own corporations, live together like a medieval guild and buy up land and work that land with robots we build

like as if we can just build robots.

China has no reason to produce robots when it would only make more people jobless (assuming the whole automation meme is right in the first place) and bring about their demographic crisis sooner.

Even then, the only reason why produce anything is because the US is willing to trade with them. This is not a thing which will be a thing 5 years from now (either due to the TPP or Trump).

Can I Mr. join this group?

Stop reading so much YA fantasy guy.
Are you twelve? a fucking guild?

guilds are legit tho. thats what they called cooperatives hundreds of years ago.

>like as if we can just build robots.
i could but i think the fags here including op severely underestimate the costs of design prototyping manufacture and maintenance

guilds were an early attempt to stop the free market and turn it into an oligarchy.
nothing more but control of supply and prices so that members have less competition.

I think thats what OP wanted, to beat the mega-corporations with his robo-guilds

kekking internally, but a discourse about it never harmed anyone

yeah but gilds had clout by regulation but we operate in a free market environment where law supports the big corps if not outright written by them.

so these "gilds" would have to behave and operate exactly like other corporations which would defeat the entire purpose of saving us from a corporate controlled future.

yeah i agree, but OP said he wanted to bring a bunch of people together and pool resources, to manufacture things. which does sound guildy but yeah they would have to be regulated like any regular company. Unless he creates his own micronation and is beholden to no sovereign entity. Like City 01 from animatrix.
Knowing OP, he prolly has it all figured out

gilds don't exactly cooperate in production.
they coordinate supply but the members are competitors and usually highly specialized ones. he probably doesn't understand this simple fact. it's like a kartell for the common benefit enemies sit at the table and agree on a price noone goes under they also agree on who produces what and how much all to control the prices because competition would cut into all of their profits.

you can't fucking do this today as a small fish. you need to be a megacorp for other megacorps to sit at the table with you and talk about controlling supply.

yeah they dont fully cooperate, but they have mutual interests. like a shoemakers guild would look out for fellow shoemakers in that guild, so there is still some cooperation at some level.

In his case, its a robo-guild. Im fully aware of his, economic, logistical and regulatory hurdles,. Its just the crazyest Veeky Forums idea i've seen in yonks, that peeked my interest.

i think today the closes thing to a gild would be labor unions. all laborers in a field are competing with each other on the market but they form unions to have collective political clout negotiating power.

it's totally unapplicable to production i think especially with anti-kartell and anti-monopoly laws. it's in the free markets and the peoples best interest that such entities don't form and we are as close to free market as possible while still having an effective economy.