robotsssss

Lisbeth has a good laugh when you first show her your shovel 'gadgets', but she tries to be polite.

"That's um...well, actually this might help you get what we're doing in the lab today!" Lisbeth leads you down into the basement of the robotics building where Professor Blumenthal is playing with some robots in the battle arena, controlling them remotely with his phone.

The two of them show you how they're working on modular robot designs that anyone can assemble and customize with a minimal amount of engineering knowledge and cost. Lisbeth explains that the robots in Victoria's Gym are so cheap and easy to manufacture because they use a lot of 3D-printed parts, using machines like those the university has access to.

Opening up his laptop and sending his Porygon in, Blumenthal pulls up a program available to MIT students which lets them customize a robot by selecting pre-designed parts and putting them together. A basic physics engine lets you see how the robot would perform in real life after it's been designed. The parts can then be printed and assembled later using some other standard parts which are available to the university. The professor starts to brag about how widespread their production techniques are becoming - he cites Santalune.com as one company using their technology to quickly iterate when designing drone models for their Rotoms.

Lisbeth also chimes in with examples of how other departments at the universe are manufacturing useful equipment in a similar way - you get the feeling that she dabbles in just about everything science-related on campus and has her fingers in a lot of pies. In fact, it sounds like she does very little Gym Trainer stuff at all, which is perhaps not very surprising to you after your challenge.

It's simple enough for you to figure out, but you're going to need more time studying actual engineering courses before you understand how to design something like this from the ground up. Turns out though, most gadgeteering hobbyists like to use these sorts of modular designs or 3D-printed parts,for simplicity and standardization as well as due to cost.