[Dprglist] Robotics "Capability Maturity Model" - Thoughts?

[Murray Altheim]

On 28/10/21 4:03 am, Chris N via DPRGlist wrote:
> So in part because of questions along the line of "where do I get
> started" from Kumar, and others before him, that we occasionally 
> get, I thought it might help to have some sort of capability model
> in mind that can be referenced.
[...]

Hi Chris,

We get that question a fair bit on the Personal Robotics server, and
I'd tried even earlier (when I was still actively planning on starting
a club) to formulate some ideas to help people get started.

Here's some of my rather still-confused and -disorganised thoughts on
getting started, no where near as clear as you've has written out. It
was written as an attempt to help clarify one's goals in building
robots (maybe merely my own):

    Robot Related Goals (NZPRG)
    https://service.robots.org.nz/wiki/Wiki.jsp?page=RobotRelatedGoals

I also captured an email from David A. on what he called a "Build
Sequence" at:

    Build Sequence (NZPRG)
    https://service.robots.org.nz/wiki/Wiki.jsp?page=BuildSequence

which is somewhat akin to what you've written.

I also thought about the idea of robot weight categories. As we all
know, as you get to a certain size there's a corresponding weight,
motor torque, amperage, battery size, etc. that goes somewhat with
that. This was a mild attempt at categorising that:

   Micro 	insect-sized
   Mini 		under 1.2kg, hamster or guinea pig-sized†
   Small 	maybe chicken-sized‡
   Medium 	maybe cat or dog-sized‡
   Large 	sheep-sized
   Very Large 	up to person-sized
   Massive 	bigger than a person (pronounced 'massif' as if you're French)
   Humongous 	bigger than an elephant but smaller than a planet

   Robot Weight Classes (NZPRG)
   https://service.robots.org.nz/wiki/Wiki.jsp?page=RobotWeightClasses

This was only meant to help people think about their robot project, as
we in the Personal Robotics have on numerous occasions had people come in
and want to build human-sized robots, and we'd then explain roughly how
difficult and expensive that would be.

If you don't mind I'd like to capture your levels (with credit of course)
as another good starting point for what I'd not call "beginners" but those
starting into a robotics project. Everyone brings some skills and has a
variety of goals, so the question is matching the goals and skills to an
appropriate platform.

At some point I'd probably have a "Getting Started" page on the wiki that
linked to all these different aspects of decision making for those
considering a new robot project. And of course, one's goals change as we
dig in deeper.

Cheers,

Murray

...........................................................................
Murray Altheim <murray18 at altheim dot com>                       = =  ===
http://www.altheim.com/murray/                                     ===  ===
                                                                    = =  ===
     In the evening
     The rice leaves in the garden
     Rustle in the autumn wind
     That blows through my reed hut.
            -- Minamoto no Tsunenobu