Tag: #robotics
Writing on GPUs, LLMs, MLOps, Kubernetes — and mindset · 26 posts
26 posts are tagged #robotics; the most recent was published on 2026-08-02.
Often tagged together: #ai-papers 12 #vla 8 #electronics 6 #ai 5 #math 5
Most read in the last 90 days:
The Math You Need for Robotics, in Order: And What You Can Safely Put Off ♪ Listenable
An answer to how far you actually need to take your math to build a robot arm. Organized into six branches in order: linear algebra, trigonometry and rotation representations, calculus and multivariable methods, differen
2026-08-02 · 25 min read #robotics#math#electronics#linear-algebra#controlWhat a Robot Arm Is Made Of: Links, Joints, and What Actually Drives Them ♪ Listenable
Buy six servos to build a robot arm and it almost always collapses under its own weight. This post starts from the precise definitions of link, joint, and end effector, explains what degrees of freedom actually count and
2026-08-02 · 29 min read #robotics#hardware#electronics#arduino#mathForward Kinematics: From Joint Angles to End-Effector Position with Homogeneous Transforms and DH Parameters ♪ Listenable
Forward kinematics is calculating where the end effector is when you know the joint angles. This post shows, with real numbers, how the 4x4 homogeneous transformation matrix resolves the mismatch between rotation (matrix
2026-08-02 · 23 min read #robotics#math#electronics#raspberry-pi#hardwareThe Robot Arm Control Loop: From Trajectory Generation to PID and Gravity Compensation ♪ Listenable
Everything past the point where inverse kinematics hands you joint angles belongs to control. This post explains, through discontinuous acceleration, why writing the target angle straight into the servo makes the arm jer
2026-08-02 · 24 min read #robotics#electronics#arduino#hardware#mathInverse Kinematics: Working Backward from Where You Want to Be to the Joint Angles ♪ Listenable
Forward kinematics is a single calculation — feed in angles, get a position. Inverse kinematics can have no solution, several solutions, or infinitely many. This post derives the analytic solution for a 2-link planar arm
2026-08-02 · 22 min read #robotics#math#electronics#hardware#raspberry-piGemini Robotics 2 and the Robot Foundation Model — What Whole-Body Control Actually Changes
On July 30, 2026, Google DeepMind unveiled Gemini Robotics 2, announcing that a single vision-language-action model now controls a humanoid from its toes to its fingertips. Interestingly, the numbers released alongside i
2026-07-31 · 14 min read #ai#robotics#vla#foundation-models#evaluationThe 2026 Robotics Company Map — The Humanoid Showdown, VLA Models, and the Engineer's Way In
2026 is the inflection point where humanoid shipments jump about 7x year-over-year to a forecast of 50,000+ units. From Figure, valued around USD 39B with its in-house VLA model Helix, to Tesla Optimus Gen 3 entering mas
2026-07-09 · 7 min read #robotics#ai#vla#trends#careerRobot Safety and Alignment — Trusting Powerful Robots
How can we trust increasingly powerful robots. We take a balanced look at physical safety, constrained reinforcement learning and safety layers, handling distribution shift, human-robot collaboration safety, verification
2026-06-29 · 17 min read #ai-papers#robotics#safety#alignment#reinforcement-learningRobots That Learn from Human Video — The Dream of Web-Scale Data ♪ Listenable
Can a robot learn from videos of people handling objects. We cover affordances and trajectories, the domain gap, representation learning and pre-training, one-shot imitation, web-video scale-up, and combining with robot
2026-06-29 · 19 min read #ai-papers#robotics#imitation-learning#representation-learning#videoRobot Foundation Models — One Policy for Many Jobs ♪ Listenable
We lay out the trend of robot foundation models that aim to do many jobs across many robots with a single policy. We cover the concept of a generalist policy, large-scale robot data such as Open X-Embodiment, cross-embod
2026-06-29 · 19 min read #ai-papers#robotics#foundation-model#generalist-policy#open-x-embodimentWorld Models — When Robots Imagine the Future
An explanation of the concept of world models (learning environment dynamics), covering model-based reinforcement learning, latent-space prediction, the robotic application of video prediction and generative models, plan
2026-06-29 · 17 min read #ai-papers#robotics#world-models#model-based-rl#planningSim-to-Real — Bringing What Was Learned in Simulation into Reality
An analysis of why robot policies learned in simulation collapse in reality (the reality gap), covering countermeasures such as domain randomization, domain adaptation, system identification, and digital twins, along wit
2026-06-29 · 17 min read #ai-papers#robotics#sim-to-real#domain-randomization#digital-twinHow Robots Learn — Imitation Learning and Reinforcement Learning
An overview of the four ways robots acquire skills, followed by a deep look at imitation learning (teleoperation, behavioral cloning, DAgger) and reinforcement learning (rewards, policies, exploration): their principles,
2026-06-29 · 16 min read #ai-papers#robotics#imitation-learning#reinforcement-learning#robot-learningThe Robots Eye — 3D Perception and SLAM
How robots see the world. We walk through RGB-D, LiDAR, and stereo sensors, the SLAM pipeline, point clouds and voxels, 6D pose estimation, deep-learning perception, and finally NeRF and 3D Gaussian Splatting, with code
2026-06-29 · 18 min read #ai-papers#robotics#slam#3d-perception#pointcloudHumanoid Whole-Body Control — Walking on Two Legs and Handling with Two Hands ♪ Listenable
From walking on two legs to handling objects with hands, we lay out the core ideas of bipedal locomotion and whole-body control. We cover ZMP and MPC, reinforcement-learning locomotion, balance and fall recovery, the int
2026-06-29 · 21 min read #ai-papers#robotics#humanoid#locomotion#whole-body-controlTactile Sensing and Dexterous Manipulation — Robots That Feel with Their Fingertips ♪ Listenable
Robots have begun to feel the world with their fingertips. We lay out vision-based tactile sensors (the GelSight family) and electronic skin, the role of touch in sensing slip, force, and texture, visual-tactile fusion,
2026-06-29 · 21 min read #ai-papers#robotics#tactile-sensing#manipulation#gelsightTwo Brains for a Humanoid — GR00T N1 and Helix
A VLA for humanoid robots must combine fast reflexes with slow deliberation. Centered on NVIDIA GR00T N1 and Figure AI Helix, we organize the dual-system architecture that combines fast low-level control (System 1) with
2026-06-27 · 15 min read #ai-papers#robotics#humanoid#groot-n1#helixRobots That See, Hear, and Move — A Review of VLA Models RT-2 and OpenVLA
Vision-Language-Action (VLA) models take camera images and natural-language instructions and output robot actions directly. Centered on RT-2, Open X-Embodiment, and OpenVLA, this post organizes the VLA paradigm: its idea
2026-06-27 · 15 min read #ai-papers#robotics#vla#rt-2#openvlaDiffusion Policy and π0 — The Secret Behind Smooth Robot Behavior
Going beyond the limits of discrete action tokens, we examine two streams that generate actions as continuous values. Diffusion Policy generates actions via denoising, and π0 produces high-frequency continuous actions wi
2026-06-27 · 14 min read #ai-papers#robotics#diffusion-policy#pi0#flow-matchingThe Humanoid Robot Investment Theme — The Future Figure, Tesla, and 1X Are Building ♪ Listenable
Humanoid robots are one of the hottest investment themes of 2026. We look at the technology, key players such as Figure, Tesla Optimus, and 1X, the value chain, the debate over adoption timing, and overheating risk, pres
2026-06-18 · 20 min read #ai#humanoid-robot#robotics#investing#tesla