I’ve been interested in building a self-navigating robot for a while from hobby electronics. The problem was that I tried adding to the complexity by taking too many variables into account. I tried multiple differential drive kits only to realize some tiny part about it wouldn’t make it feasible to use. I will revisit these issues in a build I’ve been working on for a while, but wanted to mention this to explain why this isn’t under the “builds” category.

I had a great time at Intel AI DevCon 2018. They gave out a few goodies which included an AWS DeepLens preorder code. To be honest, I didn’t really understand the point of it when I preordered it, but I did it anyway since it was free. I didn’t look at the specs till it arrived. I was expecting a device locked into using AWS apps. But boy was I wrong.

After watching Professor Magnus Egerstedt speak at my college about swarm robotics, I thought I’d take the course he taught on Coursera called Control of Mobile Robots. It’s a very good course that was designed a few years ago and has an optional hardware track included. They made this part optional since it’s very difficult to keep up with ever changing DIY hardware and availability across the world. I wanted to try and follow the hardware part as well, so I went on a search for similar parts and got the newer Redbot with the Shadow Chassis.

When Google announced the AIY Voice Kit, I was very excited. The last time I was that excited, the Raspberry Pi Zero was announced. Once I realized it was being sold along with MagPi, the realization kicked in: I wasn’t going to get my hands on one of these easily, since they sell very very fast. I remember subscribing to a whole year of MagPi and getting it shipped to India so I could get my hands on that one Raspberry Pi Zero with the magazine which was otherwise sold out.

This was a project that incrementally grew to become one of the more complex robots I’ve ever built. I was interested in checking out how omni wheels work after I saw a video of a robot made by a high school friend’s startup that paints walls. I had no idea on how to control a robot with omni wheels. A quick google search later I realized they looked real cool and I decided to build one.

My interest in Control Systems grew in graduate school. Weirdly it was one of the subjects we wanted to run away from during my undergraduate days when we weren’t given the independence to choose our own subjects. At UIUC, I grew fond of the subject after attending a few lectures. The only problem was that there’s a chunk of Control Systems basics that isn’t covered in graduate school at all. Many Professors said I could skip the undergraduate class altogether, but it had a lot of hands on lab assignments that I wanted to do.