Necessity for Multiple Categories of Modular Frame Types, As Well As Component Types

I'll start off pointing out that we have some really great ideas being shared here. I'll begin with the real life example brought up by DroidFreak: Phonebloks. I guess I missed the bus on that one, and hadn't heard of it until now (but then again, the concept was developed only two months ago). The idea behind Phonebloks will undoubtedly make its way into reality, because of its necessity. Phonebloks is an excellent example of an industry addressing the problem of not having modular frames. If you haven't watched the short video explaining Phonebloks, you must, because it's just that awesome:

How...cool...is that? What I find very interesting about all this is that the cell phone industry never globally standardized any frame type before, and the consequences of that have become so noticeable to the point where a group of people just like the members of Project FRAME had to organize a webpage to share ideas for a modular phone system. If I had heard of Phonebloks sooner, I would have mentioned it in my first post welcoming members to this project.

The concept I want to flesh out with this is the idea of an industry going from non-modular to modular. Let's be real; advanced robotics hasn't become much of an industry yet, but when it will, imagine how difficult it will be to make it modular if it does not start out as modular from birth. This is exactly why Project FRAME needs all the participation it can get, because advanced robotics is far more complicated than cell phones. Hell, it will use cell phone technology within it. If the future will bring us walking robotic vehicles that are each built for a unique frame, then the entire robot may be trashed if a single element stops working, just as the Phonebloks video above mentions. Or, if all you wanted was for the robot to move faster, why trash the entire robot when you can get hydraulics with higher performance?

Let's take the analogy of Phonebloks with Project FRAME a bit further. The video above clearly depicted the different component types that will be available for Phonebloks, such as the ones labelled below:

They also have a standard design for connection ports:

What makes it easy to accomplish, however, is that there is only one frame type. There is absolutely no need to have a different variation of the board that accepts a different type of blocks, because it's always going to be a phone. Advanced robots by no means will consist of only one frame type, so what needs to be done is generate a list of frame types that we can expect the industry to divide into.

An idea for an interesting frame type has been described in Bruce Jarel Chambers' first post, which involves having only three component types: The chassis mounted joint, the intermediate segment, and a terminus. The change I would make to this system is to have the chassis already outfitted with joints that connect to whatever element you want. I believe it would over-complicate element designs if the elements themselves had the mounting joint. From all my experience with robot designs, I have learned that the moving components should weight the least, to maximize motion flow. And, if these components are limbs, then all the major joints (shoulder and hip mountings) should be intrinsically based in the chassis. Let's take another look at Ambush from Real Steel:

Notice how the shoulder joints are heavily integrated into the chassis frame. The arms themselves seem to be attached without heavy amounts of joint connections, with nothing but a rotating cylinder connecting each arm to the shoulder joint. If the shoulder joint were actually to be a part of the arm, it would be much more difficult to attach it to the chassis.

Keeping it to Real Steel robots, the film presents us with another method of shoulder joint connection, used in the robot Noisy Boy:

After his arm gets broken off, we see that it was attached with a ball joint connection, but mechanical parts surrounding the ball joint are what actually powered the arm movements, just like how the human skeletal system is engulfed by the muscular system. It is interesting to note that the ball joint itself is mounted on a large lever, allowing the robot to perform motions such as shrugging (to defend it's head, as it is a boxing robot). Ambush seemingly can do all the same, but instead of the tension chords that Noisy Boy uses, Ambush just has a bunch of hydraulic cylinders. [Take a look at http://io9.com/5847701/designing-a-world-of-robot-fighters-the-concept-art-of-real-steel for a designer commentary on the Real Steel robots.]

So to conclude, one type of modular frame for advanced robots, as first suggested by Bruce Jarel Chambers and then modified here, could be a chassis featuring standard joint connections wherever necessary, and detachable limbs with detachable terminus components. I think it's pretty simple, and it could work nicely for smaller-scale up to human-sized robots, especially if they are humanoid. Larger machines would need a larger array of component types, a list that we still have to think up. I think a preliminary step for coming up with a very agreeable list is to first identify exactly what advanced robots will most likely appear in future industry. By this I mean what sort of basic structure, what sort of attached equipment, and what industry(s) they will serve. And of course, how all their modular parts connect together.