Blog

Robotics simulations can be slow and computationally heavy. Downscaling meshes, GPU support, changes in lighting and other optimizations can drastically improve the speed and performance. Read ahead to find out more.

Gazebo Ignition is the new age simulator for robotics. Recent release of Garden and Fortress distros maintain ROS2 compatibility. This article provides a guide and pointers for migration from Gz Classic to Ignition, and open-sources an AMR robot that provides a migration template and support for multiple versions

Robotics simulators should provide accurate physics, photorealism, a diverse range of sensors and provide ample resources for robot models and environment objects. We use Webots with ROS SLAM Toolbox for an AMR application. Read more to find out how.

Actors in Gazebo provide a means to emulate human movement. A ROS plugin is provided to facilitate actor movement using velocity (Twist) or path commands. Code is open-sourced on Github

Pursuing a career in robotics allows you to work with mechanical, electrical, software and AI engineering. If you're planning to pursue a job or internship in robotics software, this post will guide you through necessary coursework, mathematical background, importance of programming, and room for specialization.

Robotics startups and businesses should avoid too many product variants, too many features, not having data collection pipelines and attempt to solve and conduct all development in-house. Read ahead to find out why!

AMR (Autonomous Mobile Robots) are transforming the intra-logistics and the warehouse industry. Aruco, QR and April tags based marker based localization using EKF sensor fusion can result in a reliable and precise state estimation. Using a Unity simulation, let's see how!

Photo-realistic simulations such as Unreal and Unity can offer a lot to the development of ROS and ROS2 based robots. While simulations like Gazebo are good for physics, the visual rendering is far from realistic. Integrations like ROS-Unity TCP connector allow user to use Unity realism for robotics simulation and testing.

ROS1 or ROS2? Robotics developers are at crossroads with ROS Noetic EoL in May 2025. We use slim_brdige to bridge communication between ROS and ROS2 and show a fleet management use case.

Software deployment for heterogeneous fleets of robots involves continuous testing while working with multiple CPU architectures - NVIDIA, Raspberry Pi, Intel NUC to name a few. We talk about leveraging dockers and Gitlab CI/CD pipelines for this purpose.

Engineering autonomous robot software involves putting together a diverse set of skills and systems. Hardware driver development, devOps for remote deployments, relevant telemetry and logs to name a few.

Creating ROS-Gazebo worlds with 2D occupancy grid maps is often a good idea to create a world file from grid maps. As the most popular robotics simulator, Gazebo allows the testing of sensor data and motion dynamics integrated testing.

An overview of popular robotics simulators - Unity, Gazebo and Stage. Analysis of their computation requirements, photo-realism, physics accuracy and suitable applications of each of them

Outdoor robot localization involves selection from a range of sensors including cameras and LiDARs but GPS is almost always an absolute essential. Find out how GPS readings when sensor fused with an IMU and noisy wheel odometery can still improve the localization by an order of magnitude.

Working as a robotics consultant, I am often asked about what's new with ROS2 navigation stack or if it is the right time to switch to ROS2. Selection of ROS or ROS2 for robot application is contingent on several considerations but out of the box navigation performance remains an important consideration.

What is ROS? Why use ROS? How to go about using it? Robot Operating System (ROS) has been the default software framework for developing intelligent and autonomous robots over the past decade.

Learn how to create a ROS workspace, writing publishers and subscribers and answer some burning ROS questions. What is a ROS service? What are ROS actions?

Autonomous robots and particularly self-driving vehicles have caught widespread interest in recent years. Developing robot prototypes and first few deployments offer far more challenges than expected in hardware and software engineering . I highlight common pitfalls and suggest product development approaches.