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 Introduction 00:01:10 Introducing Abhay Venkatesh 00:03:00 What robotics is as a field or practice 00:07:18 Platform for Robotics (PFRs) 00:10:07 OODA loop 00:12:27 What makes up a Platform for Robotics? 00:14:17 Raspberry Pi  00:15:30 Nvidia Tegra 00:17:17 Edge computing 00:19:29 Telemetry 00:22:06 Ad: SignalWire, a next-gen video collaboration platform 00:23:30 Real-time constraints and safety challenges 00:28:31 Formal verification and defensive programming 00:32:28 Operating systems in robotics 00:34:27 Nix and reproducible hermetic builds 00:37:52 Key aspects in robotics software development 00:41:14 Deployment 00:46:24 Simulation 00:48:51 Google testing pyramid  00:52:01 Actuators 00:55:27 Future of PFRs 01:02:49 Farewells Resources 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 SignalWire https://signalwire.com/ Use code THROWDOWN for $25 in developer credit Abhay’s website: https://abhayvenkatesh.com/ Abhay on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AbhayVenkatesh1 If 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.com You can also follow Programming Throwdown on  Facebook | Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Player.FM  Join the discussion on our Discord Help support Programming Throwdown through our Patreon ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★