I used to think robotics wasn’t for people like me.It felt like a closed world labs, engineers, complex systems I couldn’t really touch. Robots existed somewhere “out there,” doing important things, but always behind walls I didn’t have access to. I could read about them, maybe admire the progress, but I wasn’t part of it.
That perception started to shift when I came across what Fabric Foundation is building with ROBO.
At first, I thought it was just another technical project. Another token, another protocol. But the more I tried to understand it, the more it felt different not because of what it builds, but because of how it thinks about building.
It made me question something simple: what if robotics wasn’t supposed to be closed in the first place?
What if it could be treated like public infrastructure something open, shared, and accessible?
That idea stayed with me.
When I think about public goods, I don’t think about code or networks. I think about things like roads or the internet systems that quietly exist in the background, allowing people to move, connect, and create. Nobody asks for permission to use them. Nobody owns the experience of being part of them.
Seeing robotics through that lens changed everything for me.ROBO, at least the way I understand it, isn’t trying to turn robots into something flashy. It’s trying to give them a place to exist together. A layer where machines, services, and people can interact without being locked into one company’s system.
That’s what pulled me in.
For the first time, I didn’t feel like an outsider looking into robotics. I felt like there might actually be a role for someone like me not as an engineer building hardware, but as someone who can participate in an open system. Maybe by using it, maybe by building on top of it, or maybe just by understanding it and sharing that understanding.
It also made me think about value in a different way.If robots can perform tasks and provide services, then the question isn’t just what they can do it’s who benefits from it. In most systems today, that value feels captured, contained, owned. But in an open network, it can move. It can be shared. It can reach more people.And that’s where the idea of public good infrastructure starts to feel real, not just theoretical.
Of course, I know this isn’t something that happens overnight. Building open systems is messy. It takes time, coordination, and trust. But there’s something honest about aiming for that direction instead of defaulting to control.
I don’t see ROBO as a finished answer. I see it as an attempt an early step toward making robotics feel less like a closed industry and more like a shared space.And maybe that’s why it stuck with me.Because for the first time, I’m not just thinking about what robots can do.I’m thinking about who gets to be part of their future.
