Back to profile

From Factories to Living Rooms

Why repair and manufacturing will converge, and why the home repair robot suddenly makes sense.

After writing about manufacturing, EMCs, and then the idea of an Operating System for the Physical World, a few people asked me the same question in different ways: "This is interesting... but where does it actually go?"

I did not answer immediately, because I was still connecting the dots myself. The answer did not come from factories. It came from repair.

The Thought That Wouldn't Go Away

At some point, while thinking about SMT lines, robots, and feedback loops, I realized something odd: most physical products do not die in factories. They die in homes. Loose connectors. Worn motors. Dust-clogged fans. Cracked solder joints. Misaligned parts. And almost all of them are repairable - in theory. In practice? They are replaced.

That is when the home repair robot stopped sounding like science fiction and started sounding inevitable.

Repair Is a Bigger Industry Than We Admit

We rarely talk about repair as an industry, but look around: appliance servicing, HVAC maintenance, consumer electronics repair, industrial equipment servicing, facility maintenance. Globally, repair and maintenance is a trillion-dollar shadow industry, fragmented, manual, under-instrumented, and knowledge-poor.

And it has all the characteristics that scream "system problem":

Sound familiar? It is the same pattern I saw in manufacturing - just downstream.

The Missing Link: Manufacturing Knowledge Never Reaches Repair

Here is the uncomfortable truth: most repair problems are manufacturing knowledge problems - arriving too late.

Factories know which connectors fail, which parts drift, which designs age badly.

But that knowledge does not reach technicians, does not reach users, and does not reach robots. It dies in spreadsheets and postmortems. That is where convergence begins.

What If Repair Was Just Another Execution Layer?

This is where my thinking snapped into place. What if manufacturing, inspection, repair, and rework were not separate worlds, but different stages of the same physical system? Same product. Different states.

Suddenly, the home repair robot is not a gadget. It is a mobile execution node of the same Operating System for the Physical World.

Why a Home Repair Robot Makes Sense Now

Ten years ago, this would not work. Today, three things changed at once:

  1. Vision got good enough. Robots can now see screws, identify connectors, recognize wear, and detect anomalies - not perfectly, but enough.
  2. AI agents can reason about actions. LLMs are not just chatbots. They can read manuals, interpret schematics, reason through steps, and adapt instructions. They are not replacing skill - they are scaffolding it.
  3. Manufacturing is getting faster and local. With EMCs, SMT lines, and rapid PCBA: custom boards are cheap, iteration is fast, personalization is viable. This combination did not exist before.

This Is Not "One Robot for Everyone"

I do not believe in a single universal humanoid robot. What I do believe in is a common robotic platform with personalized behavior, feel, and character.

Same core: mobility, arm, vision, compute. Different skills, personality, interaction style, trust model. Your robot does not have to feel like mine. That is not a bug. That is the point.

Personalization Changes Everything

Some people want a quiet, invisible helper. Some want a talkative explainer. Some want strict safety. Some want experimentation. Because the robot is manufactured quickly, configured in software, and trained via interaction, it becomes yours. Not a personal robot in the sci-fi sense - but a personalized physical agent.

Where EMCs and Faster Manufacturing Come In

A home repair robot needs custom PCBs, sensor boards, motor controllers, power modules, variants. This cannot be mass-manufactured like phones. It needs fast iteration, local manufacturing, and design-manufacture feedback. Exactly what EMCs, SMT, and OSPW enable.

Manufacturing stops being a backend. It becomes a live development loop.

The Loop Finally Closes

Manufacturing - Usage - Wear - Repair - Learning - Redesign. Robots perform repairs. Vision captures failures. AI agents reason about causes. Manufacturing updates designs. The next batch is better. That loop is almost nonexistent today. But once you see it, you cannot unsee it.

This Is Bigger Than Repair

Once you have robots that act, AI that reasons, and manufacturing that adapts, you are not just fixing devices. You are building longer-lived products, circular hardware systems, and sustainable physical infrastructure. Repair stops being an afterthought. It becomes a design principle.

Why I'm Excited About This (And Why It Scares Me a Little)

I did not start out wanting to build a home repair robot. I started out asking: "Why is manufacturing so inefficient?" But every honest answer led here. This is messy. It spans robotics, AI, manufacturing, human trust, and physical safety. Which usually means it's important.

Closing Thought

The future is not a robot that does everything. It is a system where physical intelligence accumulates, robots act with context, manufacturing adapts, products live longer, and people stay in control. A home repair robot is not the end goal. It is the first place where all these ideas finally meet.