Chuck: The man who built more unique robots than any other human
Posted inMisc

Chuck: The man who built more unique robots than any other human

Warren "Chuck" Whitaker has probably built more unique robots than any other human. In the past 40+ years he has designed and fielded robots for mining, subterranean rescue, space, agriculture, nuclear cleanup, self driving cars, pipe inspection, construction and more. He has also mentored 100's if not 1000's of future roboticisits. As he gets ready to transition to his next…
The Electronic Connector Book
Posted inElectrical & Electronics Misc

Book Review: The Electronic Connector Book

The Electronic Connector Book by Davide Andrea is the book I wish I had when I first started out as a roboticist, and is the book I am happy to now have. I say this is a book, but it is a large tome of everything you ever wanted to know (and did not know you wanted to know) about…
project schedule
Posted inMisc

Project Planning: Scheduling & Estimating Activity Duration

Successful projects tend to have schedules that work (as well as budget, but that is for another time). This schedule should be made at the start of the project and actively maintained throughout the project. On large projects this may mean having a dedicated person to maintain and track the schedule. I would generally recommend revisiting the schedule at least…
Automate 2023
Posted inMisc

Automate 2023

Automate is my favorite trade show to attend each year. While there are many conferences that are academic in nature (IROS, ICRA, etc..), this show is geared to actually building and deploying of robotics. Over 725 vendors show up to exhibit to show off everything from motors, fleet management software, grippers, wheels, UGVs, IMRs, bearings, and much more. In many…
Jim Teza. How to be a better Roboticist.
Posted inMisc

Jim Teza. How to be a better Roboticist.

Hi This morning I got the news that a friend, mentor and colleague for the past 17 years has passed away. I wanted to share a few lessons from Jim. Never be satisfied and always seek perfection, yet also know when a robot is ready to test.Think about your work. If you did something incorrectly, fix it.Become an expert in…
Posted inMisc Research

Quadruped Control Full Stack Development Kit

Just sharing this announcement with the Robots for Roboticists community. I have not had a chance to use this yet. I know I generally only share things that I have used, but I felt this was worth sharing. If you try it out, let us know how it works. Announcing Quad-SDK! A full-stack quadruped control code open source, so anyone…
Posted inMisc

Robotics Dictionary

This is functional dictionary for roboticists, and not a proper dictionary. The goal of making this is to define terms from within the research and engineering world in an easy to understand manner. Try to read through this list to test your robotics terminology. This is a work in progress and I will be continuing to add to this list.…
Book Cover
Posted inMisc Robots Systems & Sensors

Book Review: The Design and Engineering of Curiosity

As soon as I saw this book existed on Amazon, I instantly wanted to read it. It is not often that I see a book dedicated to the detailed engineering design of a complex robotic system. The Design and Engineering of Curiosity: How the Mars Rover Performs its Job by Emily Lakdawalla did not disappoint. It is a fascinating read…
The easiest part was building the hardware?
Posted inMisc

The easiest part was building the hardware?

A colleague of mine who wishes to remain anonymous recently heard somebody say that hardware was the easy part of robotics. In response to that he wrote this email/poem. (I am calling it a poem, he did not). (I made a few small changes to protect anonymity) I fully understand why many people think that designing and building hardware is…
List of industrial safety standards
Posted inMisc

Industrial Robot Safety Standards, Abbreviations, Codes & Titles

I recently attended the National Robot Safety Conference for Industrial Robots and found myself confused with all of the safety standards. Here is the sheet that they provided to help identify Standards, Abbreviations, Codes & Titles. If you find any of these interesting and wish to purchase the standards you can go to the Robot Industries Association. Enjoy this list…
national robot safety conference
Posted inMisc

National Robot Safety Conference – October 2017

I had the opportunity to attend the National Robot Safety Conference for Industrial Robots today in Pittsburgh, PA (USA). Today was the first day of a three-day conference. While I mostly cover technical content on this site; I felt that this was an important conference to attend since safety and safety standards are becoming more and more important in robot…
confusing person for self driving car
Posted inMisc

Computer Vision, Context, & The Need for AI

In life as well as in computer vision, context is critical. Scroll through this post slowly and don't cheat. What do you see in the image below? Now what do you see in this next picture? Keep Scrolling How about this picture, can you now identify the images above? How did you identify the car? "Because it was on a…
Car hackers handbook
Posted inMisc

Book Review: The Car Hacker’s Handbook by Craig Smith

The Car Hacker's Handbook A Guide for the Penetration Tester is a really interesting book about how to interface with cars to read from onboard systems, spoof devices, and control the vehicle on your own. One of the reasons I really like this book is that it is easily the best book I have ever found for learning about how…
Design Thinking for Robotics and Life
Posted inMisc

Design Thinking for Robotics and Life

Hi all Recently I went to a seminar about design thinking. Design thinking is an approach to solving a problem from any domain. During the seminar people used design thinking to analyze how to automate password recovery, lead a finance team, build an activities team, and others. I used this as an exercise to look at how to teach Jr.…
peer review in software
Posted inMisc Software & Algorithms

Book Review: Peer Reviews in Software by Karl Wiegers

I have been part of many software teams where we desired to do code reviews. In most of those cases the code reviews did not take place, or were pointless and a waste of time. So the question is; how do you effectively conduct peer reviews in order to improve the quality of your systems. I found this book titled…
mastering ROS for robotics programming
Posted inMisc

Book Review: Mastering ROS for Robotics Programming by Lentin Joseph

Mastering ROS for Robotics Programming is a good book that will help you learn ROS and take advantage of some of the powerful nodes (programs) that are out there. The book covers both a 7 DOF robot arm and a differential drive robot throughout the different chapters. That should really help you out no matter which type of robot you…
SIK_Shadow_Chasis Sparkfun
Posted inMisc

Robotics for Kids (and Adults) – Getting Started and How to Progress

I get many questions from people about how I think kids and adults should get started in robotics, how they should progress, and what they should buy, to learn about robotics. Here is my quick response: I think level 1 is for people older than 12-13. Level 2 is for people older than 15, and Level 3 would be for…
practical field robotics
Posted inMisc

Book Review: Practical Field Robotics by Robert Sturges

Practical Field Robotics: A Systems Approach by Robert H. Sturges, Jr. from Virginia Tech is an interesting book about how to design a field robot from a high level systems approach, and how to build a robotic lawnmower. This book has 2 primary sections. The first part of the book looks at 3 different example robotic systems from the domains…
Kambeitz
Posted inMisc

Robots taking our jobs, Are you prepared?

Hi all Continuing on with posts from the recent RoboUniverse show in New York, I want to talk about Robots, Jobs, and Education. On the last day one of the primary talks was from Dennis Kambeitz at EZ-Robot. The topic was Preparing our workforce for a robotic world. I am going to try to hit on his key points. I…
robo universe sponsors
Posted inMisc

RoboUniverse New York 2015 – Initial Reaction

Hi all I attended the last day (5/13/2015) of the RoboUniverse conference and exhibit in New York City. It was a good experience and I got to hear some interesting talks. I am usually deeply involved in the technical aspects of robotics, so it was interesting hearing about some of the other aspects. This was the initial premiere of the…
implementation robotic systems
Posted inMisc

Book Review: Implementation of Robot Systems by Mike Wilson

Hi all Today I am reviewing Implementation of Robot Systems by Mike Wilson. This is a book about how to integrate robots into the manufacturing process. In this book Mike Wilson takes you through the process of deploying and developing your robotic systems since "All successful projects require a methodical approach to project planning." By following his lessons from over…
Robo Universe
Posted inMisc

RoboUniverse New York – May 11-13, 2015

Hi all Click here to see initial reactions after the event! RoboUniverse 2015 is happening May 11-13 in New York. I plan on being there and would love to meet up with others who are there. Please let me know if you plan on attending. I am waiting to see the full exhibitor list as it continues to grow. So…
highway transportation
Posted inMisc

Transporting your Robot

Throughout my career I have had to ship different robots to different locations around the world. Here is a little bit about what I have learnt about transportation. The 3 basic ways for a robot to travel are by land, by air, and by sea. Typically by truck (I guess there are also trains, but I have never used one,…
rim pull
Posted inMisc Testing

Drawbar Pull vs Rim Pull

Hi all Many people get confused between what drawbar pull is and what rim pull is. Many people also use the terms interchangeably. Drawbar Pull - Pull available from the vehicle (think pulling from a hitch in the rear of the robot) Rim Pull - Pull available at the rim of each driving wheel (some people say it is from…
For Profit
Posted inMisc

For Profit Technical Education Experience (ITT-Tech)

There has been a lot of talk recently about for-profit education. Most of it is negative and a lot of it is true, however there are also some good things about for profit education that is often overlooked. This post is about the good, the bad, and the ugly that I have experienced at a technical for-profit school. Before going…
soldering
Posted inElectrical & Electronics Misc

Soldering Tutorials

Hi all Here are a few soldering tutorials that might be of interest to you. These first two are your day-to-day standard soldering methods. There are many of these types of videos online. This next set of tutorials is for high reliability "proper" soldering techniques. This is actually why I am writing this post. These are used in the aerospace…
leica total station
Posted inMisc Testing

Position Tracking: Total Station

Tracking the position of a robot is difficult to do accurately, especially when you need to track position in a variety of locations. GPS is not accurate for small movements and can have jumps as the position estimate changes. One good solution is the Leica Total Station. The Total Station can measure a robots position with an accuracy of under…
disaster robotics
Posted inMisc

Book Review: Disaster Robotics by Robin Murphy

One of my personal interests is in disaster robotics. I like them for two reasons. The first is that I like the idea of being able to try and save people (I know I could have become a doctor). The other reason I like robots is that they need to operate in "extreme terrain and operating conditions" and be very…
learning ros book
Posted inMisc

Book Review: Learning ROS for Robotics Programming by Martinez and Fernandez

Hi I have only used the Robot Operating System (ROS) for several small things so I wanted to review a book on learning ROS both so that I could learn more about ROS and because ROS is increasingly being used for more robotics applications and is good for all of us to become familiar with it. ROS is a framework…
quad chart
Posted inMisc

Project Management

Hi all I am going to take a break from the technical to discuss how to run a project. During my career I have experienced several project managers and have heard from many others about their project managers. Here is my distilled list of how to run a technology (and just about any other) project. I am sure there are…