Last week, the forum buzzed with discussions on robotics engineering career paths, particularly remote work opportunities, which seem to be on the rise. Conversations also delved into technical challenges like ensuring reliable ROS 2 boots post-power outages and optimizing tremor filters for surgical robots. There was a collaborative exchange about educational resources for sensor calibration, highlighting the community’s eagerness to share knowledge and advance skills.
This Week’s Hot Topics
Weekly Robotics Jobs: “Remote roles for robotics engineers”
The focus is on the increasing availability of remote positions for robotics engineers, a trend that could reshape how we view work in this field. Read more
Reliable ROS 2 boot after power loss
A practical thread discussing solutions to ensure systems running ROS 2 can recover smoothly from unexpected power outages. Read more
Best courses for multi-sensor calibration
Community members are sharing and recommending courses for mastering multi-sensor calibration, a critical skill in robotics. Read more
Dialing in tremor filters for safer suturing
This discussion tackles the intricacies of fine-tuning tremor filters to enhance the precision and safety of robotic-assisted surgeries. Read more
How Did You Break into the Robotics Field?
An inspiring thread where members share their journeys into robotics, providing insights and motivation for newcomers. Read more
Looking forward to another week of insightful discussions and shared knowledge. Keep exploring, and don’t hesitate to contribute your thoughts to the conversations.
Had this last week; “reliable ROS 2 boots post-power outages” — we fixed it by letting systemd own bringup (After=network-online.target, Restart=always) plus a 20s watchdog that relaunches if ros2 node list stays empty; a $60 UPS cut incidents about 90%. Remote’s booming, but tremor filter work still needed a half-day on hardware, so we pair a local tech with the remote dev on a live video feed.
I’ve had good luck making the root FS read-only with overlayroot so ROS 2 still boots clean after hard power cuts; we flip it off for updates, patch, then flip it back on (docs: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/OverlayRoot). Small caveat: you’ll need to push logs/state elsewhere or carve a tiny writable partition so you don’t lose diagnostics, @sana.
One thing that bit us after hard power cuts was bad system time breaking DDS/security; adding a cheap I2C RTC and gating ROS 2 bringup on systemd-time-wait-sync.service fixed it — @tommyp_1975’s overlayroot tip plus this has been solid, with the small caveat of a about 1–2s boot delay (docs: systemd-time-wait-sync.service).