I've tried to do this, with partners and failed. Finding all the people with all the skills you need to get a prototype finished, LET ALONE a field-deployable-

I've tried to do this, with partners and failed. Finding all the people with all the skills you need to get a prototype finished, LET ALONE a field-deployable-serviceable prototype at any level of "interesting scale" is absurdly complex and multi-facted. In the US most research is targeted as selling things to the military. You might be better in Australia or any other country which offers more social funding for these types of things. This thread has a lot of good ideas, I wish I'd seen it 5 years ago. My current project might be useful for you: http://github.com/elasticdotventures/_b00t_ http://github.com/elasticdotventures/_b00t_