My perspective might be biased, since for the 30-odd years I've been in industry, I have done mostly embedded systems.
Those things you mention are skillsets: software, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, etc. Sometimes you find them all in the same person, sometimes you have separate bodies doing each one, but at the end of the day it's a staffing issue.
I'd say it's less that it's "hard" and more that iterations are slower and costly and the less capability you have in-house, the slower it is. If you have a full machine shop and a Stratasys 3D printer onsite, a lot of things can happen faster. If you're doing garden-variety industrial automation, there's far less risk than designing state of the art humanoid robots.
There is a spectrum of difficulty, like everything. In my case, I was doing this stuff freelance, in my spare bedroom at age 25, so it's not that hard.
Those things you mention are skillsets: software, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, etc. Sometimes you find them all in the same person, sometimes you have separate bodies doing each one, but at the end of the day it's a staffing issue.
I'd say it's less that it's "hard" and more that iterations are slower and costly and the less capability you have in-house, the slower it is. If you have a full machine shop and a Stratasys 3D printer onsite, a lot of things can happen faster. If you're doing garden-variety industrial automation, there's far less risk than designing state of the art humanoid robots.
There is a spectrum of difficulty, like everything. In my case, I was doing this stuff freelance, in my spare bedroom at age 25, so it's not that hard.