Welcome everyone. You may be wondering what I’m talking about in the title of the post, he he. Well, I tried to start blogging when I first set up this domain and, although I did write a few posts, I would not call myself a blogger so the (Re) isn’t really valid. I would not consider this a fresh start but, really, just a start to blogging about technology that is important to me and may be important or interesting to you.
My intent is to talk about robotics, AI/ML, edge devices, microprocessor, ROS, XR, and all that goes with it. Hopefully what I will talk about will help others who are struggling in these areas and provide some insight. Many of these topics are hot right now and I see a lot of engineering students, from robotics to electrical to control theory and more, looking for information and guidance.
I started out as a software guy with the goal of software engineering but have always been interested in the hardware-side too. I’ve amazed by those who could meld the two and do it well. Early in my career, I worked for an aerospace company in a Test Systems department and was always inspired by the engineers, what they understood, and what they were able to accomplish.
I’ve now started working on my own venture to create small to medium sized robots of various form-factors that utilize autonomy and swarm theory to complete a goal faster, for example, before their battery dies. The goal is also to use AI models to process the multitude of sensor data being gathered by these robots in near-realtime and for post-event analysis to achieve the true goal. Lastly, taking that sensor data and AI analysis and merging them to create 3D environments for use in XR (VR/MR/AR) headsets like the Meta Quest, the Apple Vision Pro, and the Immersed Visor (assuming it ever releases).
In the near future, I’ll be talking about PCB design as I feel like the next step from prototyping these robots with COTS products, like Raspberry Pi, Particle Tachyon, AMD Kria, and others, is to create your own purpose-built PCBs that are as compact and efficient as possible with only the components required since these boards won’t be mass-marketed for use in other (robotic) products. An example of this is my desire to create a 3D LiDAR sensor that is quite small, light, and provides the data / support for much smaller robots than what we are currently able to obtain. There are new LiDAR technologies being developed at universities but large technology companies are snapping those up and it’s difficult to foresee when they will become commercially available and at what price-point, so, you have to build and improve where possible.
There is so much more to talk about but I’m going to stop here and mention that my first “real” post will be about setting up your edge device. I will walk through connecting a Raspberry Pi 5 with the AI+ Kit and AI Camera and running Ubuntu as it’s OS instead of the normal Raspberry Pi OS. We will still be using the Raspberry Pi OS – Bookworm to access the sensors and hats but it won’t be the main OS. I’ll also discuss adding an IoT platform, in this case Particle, for remote access, OTA updates, terminal access, and sensor data uploads (this will get more in-depth as time goes on). The other item I’ll mention is connecting Visual Studio Code over SSH to the device, for software development on my main system/desktop but coding directly on the Raspberry Pi device. There’s more to the journey and I’ll expand on this in the next post.
I hope to see you here for all the trials I’ll be going through in this world of robotics, AI, and XR development.