
My approach would be to manufacture custom arms for particular tasks and in principle 3d printing the arms is exactly what i'm getting at (e.g. that optimised physical design processes save on cost and improves performance much more than software + expensive externally manufactured arms). 3D printed arms with comparable repeat accuracy would be an excellent optimisation over buying v expensive Kuka products. Then you could start think about different mechanisms (compliant mech, soft parts etc) and control systems/software.
Kukas are not really just a couple of servos (e.g. encoders) and there are many examples from the 90s of self walking robots with little software too. There's good literature on "morphological computation" or Rolf Pfeifer's book How the Body Shapes the Way We Think: A New View of Intelligence.
http://www.amazon.com/How-Body-Shapes-Way-Think/dp/026216239...
How the Body Shapes the Way We Think: A New View of Intelligence
by Rolf Pfeifer, Josh C. Bongard
Physical Intelligence as a new paradigm https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S235243162...
How the Body Shapes the Way we Think https://books.google.co.in/books?hl=en&lr=&id=EHPMv9MfgWwC&o...
