I build robots and random mechanisms.

A solutions company consults first, then months go to shipping and installing the hardware, followed by training and certifying the crew. After deployment, every breakdown waits on an outside repair, adding to the 27 hours a month large plants already lose to unplanned downtime. All told, it costs four to five times the arm's price. Even then, no digital twin yet fuses live data from every brand of machine on the floor, so people still make the calls.

Veteran on-shop staff averages 9.6 years of tenure, young hires 2.7, so expertise retires before it transfers. An exoskeleton that records a veteran's motions could replay them to guide the next hire, passing down know-how the veteran never had to write down. This could also bring down the cost of training and certifying new staff.

Off-the-shelf modular actuators already let integrators snap custom robots together, but actuators are a third of a robot's value. Cheaper, task-matched modules would cut both the price and the custom engineering behind every deployment.