Extreme Collaboration

Context

OSE aims to prove that large-scale collaboration can happen in industrialized countries to develop economic artifacts openly as opposed to via proprietary consortia such as corporations. To prove this, we are aiming to upskill numerate citizens in significant numbers (hundreds) and demonstrate that incentives can be created for siginificant economic development to address cost-of-living issues of affordability - such as housing. Here we propose a method to upgrade hundreds of people to design and production skill to eneble distributed, open production of powerful economic means - namely homes, heavy machines, and building materials as a first proof-of-principle that advanced economic process can be made appropriate (as in appropriate, modern technology) thereby providing a robust economic base as a substrate for advancing civilization.

OSE Experiment

OSE has solved partially for swarm collaboration. For example, we can get 50 people to show up to Extreme Builds like the Seed Eco-Home.

We would like to do this not just for the house, but for all components of the Global Village Construction Set.

To achieve civilization-grade results, the chance of achieving positive feedback loops (productization) increase if we have Linux-scale participation, ie, hundreds or thousands of concurrent developers. This requires a higher level of coordination than software.

Method

• Define a pay-to-pay-attention process to upskill people, focusing on getting people to commit to learning
• Start with a signifcant value pool, such as all the prior work of OBI on housing - the modular construction system of the Seed Eco-Home and Aquaponic Greenhouse.
• Provide a 5 day crash course online - teaching AI-assisted CAD, Collaboration Architecture, and Construction Sets for design.
• Invoke a design sprint to produce open design software using no-code means. Software includes a code-compliance package including engineering
• Collaborating engineers stamp design
• Apply the software to generate build instructions and a public swarm-build event of a house for a select recipient who already has land from an early part of this process.
• Process involves 10 days - where people learn build skills and build modules. Then they swarm upon a build (5 days of this 10 days)

Logistics

Process can work for any design-build project of real significance.

• T-180: 5 day crash course online (100+ people, $500 for the course). One person is randomly selected for a house build as a bonus, paying $25k above BOM cost for OSE services. Home includes PV, thermal battery, hydronic in-floor heating
  • 50% of revenue goes to hiring engineering/compliance/design support.
• T-150: Distributed process produces a house designer with AI.
• T-120: Designs completed for a new house of customer spec. Documentation produced, including engineering + plan check.
• T-30: Permits pulled
• T-Day - exciting!

Protocol for Open Design

1. Study Design Guide. Includes pictures and vBOMs from real sources.
2. Define a sufficient part library of admissible parts.
3. Start by defining specification schemas that can be reused. Generate FreeCAD CAD with AI by creating compilers for parts.
4. Create a Gallery on wiki - upload all library parts there. Upload 3 items: schema, compiler, and actual FreeCAD file.
5. Do a first cut of all parts. In successive iterations - keep upgrading the schema - such as build order rules for automated instructionals, actual part links, properties (such as weight), material parameters, etc. This will allow full automation of build instructionals and BOMs.

Meta

There are many tasks that go into an integrated Design/development infrastructure, and because of the numerous dependencies, they are hard to execute because of these dependencies: one part depends on the knowledge of another. To assist, we define physical interface design, but what about interface design to other areas, such as different machines or product ecosystems? To address this, we can create part libraries that contain all the dependencies, and if these are to be modified, modifications follow Design Rules.

Part libraries would allow us to move between tractor construction set, heavy machining, materials handling, materials processing, fuel and power, construction, and other areas. In the minimum form, precision machining and metal work, up to rolling and hot metal work, can all be built upon basic Tractor Construction Set infrastructures.

The key is to define tasks and processes that are scalable to wide participation. OSE is working on leveraging hundreds to thousands of contributors in realtime design. Its Summer X and other swarm events aim to optimize for wide collaboration. This is because of the premise that any complex productization involves significant resources on the order of $1M a pop, or about 10 people working full time for a year 20,000 development hours. This can be facilitated with AI these days.