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Multirotor drones, and mainly quadcopters are the most popular and versatile type of aerial drones, which found use in many fields, such as aerial photography, research, competitions and even military. With their X configuration, they are stable, efficient, easy to control and maneuver. In this post, we will list and describe high level design goals for multirotors / quadcopters. We will focus on components of the drone itself (e.g. frame, motors, flight control system etc…) in future posts, however we will still mention these components here as applicable, while talking about each main design criteria. When designing a multirotor, the following main criteria are taken into account, all of which […] Read More

When we talk about robots, the first images that come to mind are often machines that move, sense, and act here on Earth. Voyager 1 and Voyager 2, twin spacecrafts launched in 1977, don’t fit that stereotype, but they share the same fundamental qualities. They are machines equipped with sensors, mechanisms for movement, decision-making routines, and the ability to act independently. In that sense, they are robotic explorers—though their mission takes place in deep space, billions of kilometers away. Each Voyager spacecraft was designed to study the outer planets and then continue into interstellar space. To do this, they carry a suite of instruments that measure magnetic fields, charged particles, […] Read More

Robot vacuums are among the most widely adopted forms of domestic robotics. They autonomously navigate their environment while simultaneously performing mapping and cleaning tasks. In this article, we will examine the underlying mechanisms that enable their operation. Navigation can be implemented using relatively simple methods or through more advanced, sensor-driven approaches. The simple method basically involves the robot randomly bumping into obstacles (using a contact switch), sensing a cliff (with a downward-pointing infrared sensor), or detecting a large object (with an infrared sensor) and then changing direction. The robot does not build a map of the environment in this method, but over time, these random movements—combined with wall following and […] Read More

In robotics, an encoder is a sensor that measures physical movement and converts it into electrical signals, such as measuring how much a motor rotates, which is converted into electrical signals, which can then be processed by a robot’s motion control system. It is possible to group encoders in a few ways such as: Incremental vs. Absolute which is to keep track of positions, Rotary vs. Linear for measuring rotational or linear movement Or the system that is used to measure the movement such as magnetic, optical, capacitive and a few more. As an example, (see figure below) an optical encoder works by a light source emitting a tiny amount […] Read More

A neural network is made of layers, and layers are made of nodes (also called neurons or units). It is these nodes that process input data. First, each neuron that receives input. If this is the first layer, the input is raw data. If it is a higher order layer, the input comes from the layer below. The node applies weights to the inputs. Then adds a bias term. Then applies a nonlinear activation function (such as ReLU or sigmoid) and produces its outputs the resulting value to the next layer, which receives it as input. The keyword here is “nonlinear” because in real life things are rarely linear. Everything […] Read More

When designing robots, there is the need for a system in standardized format, to describe physical and kinematic properties of a robot. This is achieved by a robot description format. There are several commonly used formats including but not limited to URDF, SDF, MJCF. URDF (Unified Robot Description Format) is an XML based format which describes physical and kinematic properties of a robot for use in robotics software, and mainly in ROS (Robot Operating System), which is open source and the most widely used robot design software today. Let’s take a closer look at what URDF specifically does: Therefore it is a great tool in visualization of the robot and […] Read More