Recently, I’ve been thinking about some good practices in robotics software development and realized that one of the most impactful is the one I learned early on. The lesson is: Build Toolkit(s) . Background In 2014, I wrapped my degree and moved to the UK to join SkyCircuits (now Callen-Lenz ), a company that at the time was developing high-end autopilot for drones. What set us apart at the time…
Intro If you’ve been following my blog for a while, you might have seen my earlier blog posts summarizing my experience as a Remote Robotics Consultant. In case you’d like to start from the beginning, here is the ordered list of my posts: One Year of Working as a Robotics Consultant Thoughts on 2 Years as a Remote Robotics Consultant Remote Robotics Consulting - 3.5 Years In Remote Robotics…
Intro This year, I paid my first visit to FOSDEM (Free and Open Source Software Developers’ European Meeting) and helped organize the Robotics and Simulation Devroom. This blog post summarizes my experience. Last year, Kimberly McGuire approached me about organizing a robotics devroom at FOSDEM. One thing led to another, and we assembled a dream team of organizers for the “Robotics and Simulation…
Intro If you’ve been following my blog for a while, you might have seen my earlier blog posts summarizing my experience as a Remote Robotics Consultant. In case you’d like to start from the beginning, here is the ordered list: One Year of Working as a Robotics Consultant Thoughts on 2 Years as a Remote Robotics Consultant Remote Robotics Consulting - 3.5 Years In In this blog post, I will…
Earlier this year, I made a beginner’s course Build Mobile Robots with ROS2 , that focuses on mobile robots. This blog post describes my experience and thought process when designing it. Introduction I used ROS for my Master’s Thesis ( A 3D Mapping Payload for UAV Applications ) in 2013. Then, I started working full-time with it around 2016 and never stopped. My main focus was always on…
While preparing my ROS2 course on mobile robots I was not able to find quality information about basic sensors that can be used for mobile robots and the most important considerations on using them. In this short blog post, I’ll discuss some of the issues I have come across while using IMUs and LiDARs in tens of robotics projects. IMUs If you are working in mobile robotics it’s pretty much given…
This is the third blog post in the series of posts summing up my experience working as a Robotics Consultant. My recent realisation is that I’ve been consulting for half my career now, so hopefully some of the things I’ve learnt along the way will help someone else out there. Previous Blog Posts If this update is your entry point to my reflections on working as a remote Robotics Consultant, then…
In my previous post I’ve shared some of my experience working with Septentrio Mosaic X-5 dev kits. After seeing some good results with that hardware I’ve decided to try to use them with some other hardware to realise a prototype that I had in mind for quite some years. In this post I’m going to describe what I did to get a first prototype working and share some tips for anyone who would like to…
Quite a while ago I’ve received two units of mosaic development kits from Septentrio. This blog posts sums up my experience with it and provides some insights into integrating these with ROS. First impressions The first thing that you notice when unpacking the module is the size of the carrier board at 10x16 cm it’s quite large, however, the core module is only 7x5 cm. I don’t think I’ve ever used…
It’s that time of year again when I’m thinking back on the journey I set up for myself by deciding to go into Robotics Consulting. This article is a follow up to the blog post I wrote last year . This year, I’ve decided to try and cover the most important aspects of what I’m doing, and how it has been working out for me. The work I had I’m very grateful for the kind of work that I do - it feels…
Recently I’ve started integrating Ouster OS1-16 on a client’s platform and he was nice enough to allow me to run some tests with this LiDAR sensor. This post describes my first impression with this unit and provides some pointers that can be useful for anyone looking into using Ouster sensors with Robot Operating System. Hardware Parameter Value Range 0.25-120m (at 80% reflectivity) Range…
I believe that in everyone’s life there comes a time where they need to do what they’ve always feared: they need to compile a Unix Kernel. This post is a step by step guide how I enabled the PPS support on Jetson Nano. Background For one of the projects I’m working on we wanted to have as precise timing information as it gets on a Linux board. In this particular project I opted on using gpsd…
Together with Robosynthesis we’ve been working on developing and integrating a 360 camera module for our ROS based industrial inspection robots. I was so pleased with the results that I couldn’t pass on the opportunity to share what we’ve been up to. Background In one of the projects we have worked on we run into an issue - teleoperating a robot in an environment filled with obstacles was really…
As you might have seen from two of my previous posts ( 1 , 2 ) I have been doing some testing with ublox F9P based ArduSimple RTK setup. In this blog post I’m describing how I integrated these modules with Robot Operating System (ROS). Introduction Please see my first post in this series to learn more about my ArduSimple setup the short story is I use simpleRTK2B for my base station and…
In my previous post I was sharing my first impressions from using ArduSimple RTK GPS . It’s time to share some information about the small but steady progress I had made since! Introduction In the last post I was testing the RTK in a very static manner by putting the GPS antennas next to the wall of a building. I’m not a fan of sticking electronic boards straight onto any rough surfaces that are…
ArduSimple provided me with their RTK2B+heading module recently. In this blog post I’m describing my experience running the first tests with these modules and my planned further tests. My end goal is to integrate the modules with ROS and get a precise positioning in 2D with extra heading information. RTK basics They say that a picture is worth a thousand words, so here is a 5 minute YouTube video…
If I knew how to draw I would create a header for this blog post that would show a lama getting vaccinated. Since you won’t be seeing it any time soon, let’s jump into iris_LaMa , a localization and mapping library that works with ROS. Setup Robosynthesis development platform Similarly to my previous experiments ( T265 test and slam_toolbox evaluation ) I’ve run the test described in this post on…
While working on another blog post I fell into a rabbit hole of comparing SLAM packages using ROS. This blog post briefly describes how I managed to compare the results of two SLAM packages by using evo Python package . Background Recently I’ve started working a lot with various SLAM packages in ROS using the Robosynthesis dev platform. I figured that opening RVIZ, displaying the robot model in…
In this post I will write about my first impressions after working with Realsense T265 on a wheeled mobile robot and give some tips on the configuration I think is most correct with respect to ROS standards. Setting up Robosynthesis development platform I’ve tested the T265 on a Robosynthesis Dev Platform that you might have seen it in my previous post . While working with the T265 tracking camera…
In the past couple of weeks, as part of a project with Robosynthesis , I’ve been exploring slam_toolbox by Steven Macenski . This post summarizes my experience so far. Here is the description of the package taken from the project repository: Slam Toolbox is a set of tools and capabilities for 2D SLAM built by Steve Macenski while at Simbe Robotics and in his free time. This project contains the…