To provide more anecdata, I consistently read more than in the original post. But I found myself reading less during 2020 even though I had more time to read.
Creating Dungeons & Dragons characters. I found that for first time players it is difficult to overcome the initial onslaught of information and rules. So I created a form-based questionnaire that abstracts out most of the uninteresting parts of creating a character, their stats. Based on how a player answered the questions, they are emailed a filled-out character form along with relevant information to their character if they want to read up more.
This saves me and each player a fair bit of time, as every new player gets a personalized starting point, making explanations shorter and more relevant.
Yeah, should be just trig. It seems the advantage the arm-based system has is more options for the pose of the end effector when grabbing stuff. But that also means you can get the arm into poses with much less manipulability. If you just need to grab items from a box, seems like the Cartesian robot is simpler, and wouldn't have that problem.
I'm confused why more teams haven't used Cartesian systems. In my experience, arms with many rotational joints can become very complicated even for pick and place tasks. Do most teams use off the shelf bots or build their own?