Smartphones need a physical embodiement for humans to interact with them. Arguably, there is an optimal embodiement: a device with a screen, a battery and a wifi transciever which will best solve the task of connecting humanity to the internet. Once that device is achieved, all the value can be extracted by writing suitable software for it. Owning the hardware builds defensibility but true value comes from applications.

Just like for smartphones, hardware is a necessary hurdle for robots to interact with the physical world. If there is an optimal embodiement for robotics, the best strategy once a minimal working prototype was achieved would be to initiate the mass production of that general purpose robot to massively benefit from the economies of scale.

As everybody will be working towards the same optimal embodiement, the first one who gets to mass manufacturing scale will have reduced costs the most. This will enable them to start gathering data on a massive scale, initiating the data flywheel which will lead to the creation of a closed ecosystem. A product ecosystem inside of which developpers will only be able to build value by writing software, one akin to Apple.

What if a robot with 12 joints instead of 60 weighing half the weight did the task faster and more accurately than a general purpose robot? What if it was magnetic and could climb steel directly instead of needing scaffolding? What if its battery lasted 10 times as long as there was no need to power legs and fight gravity all day? Would the economies of scale powering a general purpose robot really offset such a performance difference?

Can a much smaller company provide more value to a client with a task-specific robot than a giant company serving them a single embodiement robot with adapted software? Could the tiny company out-compete the massive one out of the market solely from providing task-optimized hardware?

If you believe in the task specific vision, you acknowledge that hardware is an integral part of every single application, it is there all along, in each and every product developpement cycle being done across every single industry.

In this vision, you must make hardware into a commodity product, it must become accessible, adaptable and modular such that the barrier to entry into making a new hardware platform is drastically lower. If you believe in this vision, then you must Make Hardware Simple.

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