ARPA Workforce Training Grant - Pre-Submission Meeting
Channel: Marcin Jakubowski
Date: 2022-10-31

We ended up requesting $1.49M for training builders on the Seed Eco-Home as a stepping stone for careers in civilization reboot.  Budget narrative is juicy (copied in part as it is too long):

Curriculum: The core of our program is creating rapid learning materials. This is a combination of Design Guides, the hands-on Rapid Learning Facility (RLF), and supporting design software, and supporting technologies. The Design Guides explain both design principles and effective building techniques, which apprentices can practice effectively in the RLF. The key information outcomes include design guides, part libraries in CAD, and build instructionals ranging from build cheatsheets, videos, infographics, diagrams, all the way up to language-agnostic instructionals. This curriculum covers the Seed Eco-Home, aquaponic greenhouse, landscaping and earthworks, PV and utilities, construction/earthworking machines, surveying, house design, house automation and data collection, build quality control, and construction materials.  This would be an ongoing, parallel effort executed as soon as qualified individuals are recruited to produce distilled content.  We are aiming at unique, integrated curriculum that is simply not found anywhere else - but which we believe is possible when an integrated, hands-on, multifaceted approach is taken with the incentive of making a good living with significant growth opportunities.. We are trying to address the diverse, integrated skill sets that enable the building of a better world - as the build process is otherwise highly disintegrated. Key long-term educational goals are to enable long-term growth of builders into positions of higher responsibility as technical developers, managers, teachers, and innovators who push the state of art and open new options to other people.

Supporting Software - Assists the curriculum development effort with creating open source part libraries, part designers, and templates for technically-proven, code-compliant modules in FreeCAD, Sweet Home 3D, and Blender, and other open source software. The key outcome is enabling full technical and conceptual design capacity of the Seed Eco-Home within the above open source software packages - accessible to novices and experts alike. This includes drag-and-drop design capacity for all the house elements and subsystems, and automated extraction of Bills of Materials. This is useful for producing new or custom house designs, including technical detail for extracting build detail and build drawings. After the full model is complete in CAD, this paves the way for building simple AR apps that facilitate material/part identification, which will be used in our Rapid Learning Facility. The work product includes a complete digital model that allows for easy creation of procedural instructions - which is the basis for any future designs and builds. 

(1)  Rapid Learning Facility - Build-practice infrastructure where students work on module assembly with prepared, partially assembled modules. Bays with Module Assembly Stations will work together with computer terminals, video camera stations for documentation, and  AR material identification apps - so that students can learn, perform build tasks, and document them for learning and tracking/evaluation purposes. The build  modules are assembled and taken apart repeatedly for learning purposes, so that each student is exposed rapidly to a whole range of build expertise. Students take time lapse video as a transparent way to document their progress, which sets a pathway for easy and transparent performance evaluation. The key outcomes are ~24 practice stations with time lapse video where students assemble various modules of the seed eco-home and track their learning rate with a transparent leaderboard that shows everyone’s progress in time. (2) Computer Lab -. Includes 6 3D printers for modeling, prototyping, scale model kits, and new building product development. Design, rendering, analysis software for the Seed Eco-Home. Aerial drone-based surveying/photography/3D mapping. 3D scanning and digital twinning. Includes technology for data acquisition, sensing, automation, and control of a smart home. Includes basic apps and hardware for computer vision, augmented reality, and remote control, and automation. Platforms focus on the  Arduino, Beagleboard, and Linux platforms (all open source). Includes site design software, surveying equipment including RTK GPS, and GIS software. Thus, our technology includes full capacity for surveying, site planning, and site documentation using manual methods and mission-planned drones. Purchases will be made as soon as possible as they are critical to our teaching capacity.

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