When our team started building 3D perception into our first autonomous mobile robot in 2019, we picked stereo vision because it looked cheaper on the bill of materials. Three months later we were stuck on a warehouse floor where the boxes were uniform brown and the lighting flickered between LED and sodium. Depth output looked … Read more
When you tilt your phone and the screen rotates, a drone stays level in a crosswind, or a robot arm moves with surgical precision, three tiny sensors are doing the heavy lifting. The accelerometer vs gyroscope vs magnetometer comparison is one of the most common questions in robotics and embedded electronics, because each sensor measures … Read more
If you have ever watched a robot vacuum glide across your living room floor and wondered how it knows where the couch is, you are not alone. The short answer is that the robot builds a map while it moves, then uses that map to figure out where it is and where to go next. … Read more
SLAM stands for Simultaneous Localization and Mapping. It is the computational process that lets a robot, drone, or autonomous vehicle build a map of an unknown environment while simultaneously tracking its own position inside that map. If you have ever watched a robot vacuum clean a room it has never seen, or wondered how a … Read more
When I first started picking robot arms for a small assembly cell, I stared at spec sheets for hours wondering why every manufacturer bragged about repeatability numbers but barely mentioned accuracy. The short answer turned out to be the most important lesson of my career: repeatability and accuracy measure two completely different things, and confusing … Read more
Robots detect obstacles by combining physical and electronic sensors, such as LiDAR, ultrasonic, infrared, and cameras, to scan their surroundings, then running software algorithms in real time that turn those readings into a spatial map and a safe motion decision. If you have ever watched a robot vacuum weave around a chair leg or a … Read more
A line following sensor is an infrared (IR) device that uses an emitter and detector pair to detect the reflectance difference between a line (usually black) and the surface (usually white), enabling robots to autonomously follow a predetermined path. I have wired dozens of these sensors to Arduino boards, STM32 boards, and even bare Atmega32 … Read more
A depth camera is a sensor that reports the distances to surrounding objects in an image format, where each pixel encodes a distance value from the camera. I have spent the last decade testing depth sensors in our robotics lab, and the moment a flat color feed turns into a real 3D point cloud still … Read more
A Hall Effect Sensor is a solid-state magnetic field sensor that detects the presence, strength, and polarity of a magnetic field and converts it into a measurable electrical signal. Because the sensor has no moving parts and never physically touches the magnet, it can run for billions of cycles without wearing out. In this guide, … Read more
Tactile sensing in robotics is the technology that gives robots a working sense of touch. It lets machines measure force, pressure, vibration, texture, and slip when they physically contact an object, much like our skin does for us. When I first read about a robotic hand that could hold a strawberry without crushing it, I … Read more