Drone Design Hands On

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Drone Flying

This post is part of the Hands on Robot Design series. See here for the full list of posts/topics https://robotsforroboticists.com/hands-on-ground-robot–drone-design-series for information on mechanical, electrical, motion control, computing, sensors, and more. The drones designed for the DARPA SubT challenge needed to be great at flying through tunnels and exploring unknown subterranean environments. The plan was […]

Hands On Ground Robot & Drone Design Series

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subt robots

Hi all, This is a new series looking at the detailed design of various robots. To start with we will be looking at the design of two different robots that were used for the DARPA Subterranean Challenge. Both of these robots were designed for operating in complex subterranean environments, including Caves, Mines & Urban environments. […]

Book Review: The Design and Engineering of Curiosity

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Book Cover

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. […]

Ford Self Driving Car

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Ford self driving car

Today I had the chance to see a Ford Fusion self driving car. With all of the recent news it is easy to forget that Google and Uber are not the only players in this game. Most large auto manufacturers have a self driving car program, including Ford. Ford is already testing their self driving […]

Sensors Driving the Uber Self Driving Car

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Uber Self Driving Cars Top View

I have had a bunch of questions from friends about how the Uber self driving car works. The simple answer is that I don’t know. I have no relation to, or inside knowledge of what Uber is doing. However I can look at the outside of the vehicle and try to guess what sensors I […]

Mars Rovers

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mars rovers

Hi all It is surprisingly hard to find a list of the technology used in the mars rovers. Here is a quick post summarizing some of the technology used in the NASA JPL Mars rovers. The list is only partialy complete since I do not have all of the information. Please leave comments below to […]

Robot Bases (and other development platforms)

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husky robot

Hi all This is going to be a quick post. There are many cases where instead of building a full robot from scratch, you just want to buy a platform. These platforms can serve as the base of your robot that you build upon, or just as a test platform for developing/testing new software with. […]