Ryan Mitchell

If you have ever watched a robot vacuum glide confidently under furniture or seen a drone hold position in midair, you have watched SLAM at work. Visual SLAM vs LiDAR SLAM is one of the most important technology comparisons in modern robotics, because both approaches solve the same problem: how does a machine map an … Read more

If you have ever wondered how a robot vacuum senses the leg of a chair in milliseconds, how a modern phone blurs the background in portrait mode, or how a car nudges the brakes before you do, you are looking at Time of Flight sensing at work. I have spent the last several years working … Read more

Choosing between LiDAR vs camera vision for robot navigation is one of the most important decisions a robotics engineer makes during system design. I have spent the last several years working on autonomous mobile robots, and I have watched this debate play out across warehouses, sidewalks, and living rooms. Both technologies let a robot perceive … Read more

2D LiDAR vs 3D LiDAR is the single most common decision point when you build a robot, drone, or autonomous vehicle, and the wrong pick can blow your budget or leave you blind to obstacles above the floor. In this guide, I will walk you through exactly how each sensor works, where each one wins, … Read more

If you are picking a distance sensor for a robot, you have probably landed on three names over and over: LiDAR, Radar, and Ultrasonic. Each one measures how far away an object is, but they do it with completely different physics, and that physics decides what your robot can actually see. LiDAR uses laser pulses … Read more

Flashing firmware to a robot controller sounds intimidating the first time, but it follows a predictable pattern once you understand the moving parts. I have flashed industrial arms, FTC control hubs, and a handful of custom robotic joints, and the workflow almost always boils down to: prep, connect, write, verify. In this guide I will … Read more

If you have ever watched a self-driving car glide through traffic or seen a robot vacuum map your living room, you have already witnessed LiDAR in action. Light Detection and Ranging is the technology that gives machines a precise sense of depth, and understanding how does LiDAR work has become essential for anyone serious about … Read more

Current draw is the amount of electrical current a robot or its components pull from the power source during operation, and understanding it is the difference between a robot that runs for hours and one that dies in minutes. I learned this the hard way when my first differential drive robot kept browning out during … Read more

You build a robot, wire everything up, test it on the bench, and it runs perfectly. Then you put it on the ground, add some weight, and the motors freeze. If you have ever asked yourself why does my robot motor stall under load, you are dealing with one of the most common and frustrating … Read more

Learning how to solder connections for robot electronics is the single most important skill you can develop as a robot builder. A beautifully designed robot with perfectly tuned code will still fail on the competition floor if a single solder joint goes cold or a motor wire shakes loose after 200 rounds of combat. I … Read more