Yesterday, I kicked off my first semi-serious woodworking project. On the first day, I spent time cleaning up the workshop, figuring out how to use a plunge saw without dying in the process, and how to cut things with very limited workspace. I ended up making two cuts and lost 4mm on one part (still not clear how that happened), so I have to adjust the whole project now. Needless to say, can’t wait to get back into the workshop and get back to it.
Live Demo: Compose Your Robotics Data Platform [Sponsored]
Building a robotics data platform means connecting data collection, search, visualization, custom tooling, and automation. In this live session on October 14th, learn how to build a robotics data stack using APIs, custom visualizations and transformations, webhooks, and embedded tooling. Open to all.
Robot Hands for Modern AI and Real Work
Boston Dynamics released this piece about the design of Atlas’s hands. The design starkly contrasts with what 1X had shown, which we covered a couple of weeks back. Boston Dynamics chose a design that doesn’t closely mimic a human hand. Every joint is direct-driven using the same actuator, which is a big win for mass manufacturing.
This quote really stood out to me in this piece:
The ultimate general-purpose dexterous manipulator will not be an over-complicated hand, but one that is reliable and is capable of using tools. The dexterity necessary to use tools is a core capability necessary to turn humanoids into the general purpose machines of the future.
What 30,000 robot dogs taught me about degrees of freedom and shipping a real robot product
This piece introduces a Petoi Quaddle, a simple four-legged robot that I think should fit a classroom setting well! What I like most about this write-up is Rongzhong Li’s thoughts on running a start-up built on an open-source product, and his thoughts on feasibility vs. the active DoF formula (and the calculator). Kudos to the author for taking such a customer-oriented approach to running his company!
Plane Crazy: Building A Plane In 30 Days
I’ve learned about this documentary in a Hacker News thread about the passing of Bob Cringely. I’ve only just started watching it, but it looks quite fun, and I think most of you would appreciate the challenge of building a complex machine in just 30 days.
A Generic Framework for Evaluating LiDAR Performance Across Varying Environments
Aarush Jain created a neat framework for evaluating and comparing LiDARs that assumes the sensor is placed in a known, measured environment. This should be very useful to anyone evaluating sensors for their robots. Nice work, Aarush!
Cybflight
Cybflight is an open-source flight controller written in Rust with the hardware layer neatly abstracted away. This video shows an autonomous multirotor flying with this board at speeds over 100 km/h. To learn more about this project, check out this paper.
5 Strategies to Sink your Hardware Startup
This is a nice, lightweight story about some mistakes one can make when starting a startup right out of school. There are some good lessons there!
F.02 Decommission
Figure pulled off a bit of a PR stunt, melting their robots in a foundry in a spectacular way. That’s surely one way to decommission your hardware, but I can’t help but think it’s wasteful. I hope other companies don’t follow suit.
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Events
- FUSE Toulouse 2026: Oct 06, 2026. Toulouse, France
- Open Source Summit: Oct 07 - Oct 09, 2026. Prague, Czechia
- ROSCon UK 2026: Oct 21 - Oct 23, 2026. Edinburgh, United Kingdom
- ROSCon Spain 2026: Oct 27 - Oct 28, 2026. Valencia, Spain
- Humanoid Europe 2026: Nov 05 - Nov 06, 2026. Munich, Germany
- FUSE San Francisco 2026: Nov 19, 2026. San Francisco, California, United States of America
- ROSCon BE 2026: Nov 25 - Nov 26, 2026. Nivelles, Belgium
- Humanoids 2026: Dec 06 - Dec 09, 2026. Santa Clara, California, United States of America
For more robotic events, check out our event page.
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