AI chat assistants can produce a confident parts list, wiring notes and code for a robot, but they lose continuity between messages: a motor picked early is never re-checked against the battery picked later. This issue explains why robot errors live in the gaps between CAD, circuits, power and simulation, walks through sizing a battery for a campus delivery rover, and lists five checks to run before trusting an AI-generated robot design.
In this issue
- A robot is one connected system, while a chat is a stream of separate answers, so decisions made in one message are never re-checked against later ones.
- Most robot design errors sit between disciplines: CAD vs. circuit (mismatched servos), circuit vs. power (stall current missing from the supply budget) and simulation vs. reality (unmeasured model drift).
- Battery sizing for a 2-hour delivery rover: Battery (Wh) ≈ average power (W) × runtime (h) ÷ usable fraction, e.g. 20 W × 2 h ÷ 0.8 = 50 Wh. The average power is an assumption that must change whenever the motors change.
- Five checks before trusting an AI-generated design: one shared parts list, joint torque at full reach with payload, a power tree sized for peak and stall current, simulation before soldering or printing, and a measured sim-to-real gap.
- Genuine Robotics keeps design (Structure Builder), electronics (Circuit Builder), engineering checks and the robot brain inside one project, so a change in one discipline carries through to the others.
