Building a Robotics Software Platform with Abhay Venkatesh

You’ve seen the dancing Boston Dynamics dogs, Honda’s ASIMO greeting people at malls, and the half-court-shooting robot at the Olympics, among other awe-inspiring robot stories that nowadays are getting increasingly more common. But equally fascinating, especially for us programmers, is the amount of programming and structure needed to make sure these robots work as intended. In this episode, we talk with Abhay Venkatesh, Software Engineer at Anduril Industries, about Platforms for Robotics (PFRs), and the intricacies happening inside these mechanical wonders.This episode touches on the following key topics and ideas:00:00:24 Introduction00:01:10 Introducing Abhay Venkatesh00:03:00 What robotics is as a field or practice00:07:18 Platform for Robotics (PFRs)00:10:07 OODA loop00:12:27 What makes up a Platform for Robotics?00:14:17 Raspberry Pi 00:15:30 Nvidia Tegra00:17:17 Edge computing00:19:29 Telemetry00:22:06 Ad: SignalWire, a next-gen video collaboration platform00:23:30 Real-time constraints and safety challenges00:28:31 Formal verification and defensive programming00:32:28 Operating systems in robotics00:34:27 Nix and reproducible hermetic builds00:37:52 Key aspects in robotics software development00:41:14 Deployment00:46:24 Simulation00:48:51 Google testing pyramid 00:52:01 Actuators00:55:27 Future of PFRs01:02:49 FarewellsResources mentioned in this episode:CompaniesAnduril Industries https://www.anduril.com/Nvidia https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/Boston Dynamics https://www.bostondynamics.com/ToolsArduino https://www.arduino.cc/Raspberry Pi https://www.raspberrypi.org/Nvidia Tegra https://developer.nvidia.com/tegra-developmentNixOS https://nixos.org/Docker https://www.docker.com/Bazel https://bazel.build/Our sponsor for this episode is SignalWirehttps://signalwire.com/Use code THROWDOWN for $25 in developer creditAbhay’s website: https://abhayvenkatesh.com/Abhay on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AbhayVenkatesh1If you’ve enjoyed this episode, you can listen to more on Programming Throwdown’s website: https://www.programmingthrowdown.com/Reach out to us via email: programmingthrowdown@gmail.comYou can also follow Programming Throwdown on Facebook | Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Player.FM Join the discussion on our DiscordHelp support Programming Throwdown through our Patreon

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