Unfinished Creations, Unbridled Innovation.https://www.half-built-robots.com/https://www.half-built-robots.com/2026/02/17/paper-notes-teaching-novices-to-think-like-cobot-experts/https://www.half-built-robots.com/2026/02/17/paper-notes-teaching-novices-to-think-like-cobot-experts/Collaborative robots are showing up in more and more manufacturing facilities, but there's a persistent gap between what cobots can…Tue, 17 Feb 2026 13:37:44 GMThttps://www.half-built-robots.com/2026/02/17/paper-notes-converting-manual-work-into-human-robot-teamwork/https://www.half-built-robots.com/2026/02/17/paper-notes-converting-manual-work-into-human-robot-teamwork/Collaborative robots in manufacturing have a straightforward promise: pair a human with a robot, let each do what they're best…Tue, 17 Feb 2026 10:50:43 GMThttps://www.half-built-robots.com/2026/02/17/paper-notes-helping-operators-keep-up-with-collaborative-robots/https://www.half-built-robots.com/2026/02/17/paper-notes-helping-operators-keep-up-with-collaborative-robots/Collaborative robots in manufacturing sound great on paper: a human and a robot sharing a workspace, each doing what they…Tue, 17 Feb 2026 09:30:43 GMThttps://www.half-built-robots.com/2026/02/17/teaching-a-gan-to-draw/https://www.half-built-robots.com/2026/02/17/teaching-a-gan-to-draw/Back in Fall 2018, I took CS 534 (Computational Photography) at UW-Madison. The term project was open-ended, so naturally my…Tue, 17 Feb 2026 06:21:11 GMThttps://www.half-built-robots.com/2026/02/17/teaching-a-robot-to-find-blocks/https://www.half-built-robots.com/2026/02/17/teaching-a-robot-to-find-blocks/When you're working on human-robot interaction research, there's a surprisingly mundane problem that keeps showing up: the robot needs to…Tue, 17 Feb 2026 05:33:47 GMThttps://www.half-built-robots.com/2026/02/17/real-time-inverse-kinematics-on-a-ur3e/https://www.half-built-robots.com/2026/02/17/real-time-inverse-kinematics-on-a-ur3e/During my Master's in Computer Science at UW-Madison, I spent most of my time in the People and Robots Lab…Tue, 17 Feb 2026 05:10:43 GMThttps://www.half-built-robots.com/2026/02/17/turning-robot-motion-into-fluid-art/https://www.half-built-robots.com/2026/02/17/turning-robot-motion-into-fluid-art/I found a 2D WebGL fluid simulation on GitHub's trending page one Friday afternoon and immediately lost about twenty minutes…Tue, 17 Feb 2026 04:35:42 GMThttps://www.half-built-robots.com/2026/02/17/giving-an-ir-led-strip-a-rest-api/https://www.half-built-robots.com/2026/02/17/giving-an-ir-led-strip-a-rest-api/Back in undergrad, when I set up the LED strip around my apartment's living room window, I thought the little…Tue, 17 Feb 2026 02:50:24 GMThttps://www.half-built-robots.com/2025/04/07/the-thing-about-a-covid19-laptop-server-rack/https://www.half-built-robots.com/2025/04/07/the-thing-about-a-covid19-laptop-server-rack/Not actually a server rack but three laptops on a bookcase. This was a small project right at the start…Mon, 07 Apr 2025 02:39:18 GMThttps://www.half-built-robots.com/2025/04/06/bubbles-the-arduino-dog-robot-with-an-xbee-radio-part-1/https://www.half-built-robots.com/2025/04/06/bubbles-the-arduino-dog-robot-with-an-xbee-radio-part-1/TL;DR: I skinned a dog toy, slapped an Arduino on its posterior, and then commanded it to move over radio…Sun, 06 Apr 2025 09:43:25 GMThttps://www.half-built-robots.com/2025/03/26/home-automation-setup-2025/https://www.half-built-robots.com/2025/03/26/home-automation-setup-2025/It has been a few years since I did a home automation update (see my 2022 update) and a lot…Wed, 26 Mar 2025 13:07:44 GMThttps://www.half-built-robots.com/2025/03/24/esp8266-hacked-koios-air-filter-using-okos-polip-device-to-cloud-service/https://www.half-built-robots.com/2025/03/24/esp8266-hacked-koios-air-filter-using-okos-polip-device-to-cloud-service/When I moved out to the Bay Area (California), I purchased a small KOIOS air filter to keep the wildfire…Mon, 24 Mar 2025 07:30:50 GMThttps://www.half-built-robots.com/2025/03/16/orion-a-robust-mobile-base/https://www.half-built-robots.com/2025/03/16/orion-a-robust-mobile-base/This is going to be a pretty short post as I don't have much content for this bot. Orion was…Sun, 16 Mar 2025 13:36:23 GMThttps://www.half-built-robots.com/2025/03/10/home-automation-setup-approx-2017/https://www.half-built-robots.com/2025/03/10/home-automation-setup-approx-2017/This is a short retrospective post on my home automation setup back in undergrad at MSOE. Unfortunately this was not…Mon, 10 Mar 2025 14:20:44 GMThttps://www.half-built-robots.com/2025/03/10/triclops-the-spinbot-learning-from-failure/https://www.half-built-robots.com/2025/03/10/triclops-the-spinbot-learning-from-failure/Triclops is another one of my incomplete projects. It started while I was a freshman at Milwaukee School of Engineering…Mon, 10 Mar 2025 12:46:25 GMThttps://www.half-built-robots.com/2025/03/02/building-roverbot-an-arduino-based-robot/https://www.half-built-robots.com/2025/03/02/building-roverbot-an-arduino-based-robot/RoverBot is an RC car hack gone wrong (but with plenty of lessons learned along the way). Started in high school, revisited in undergrad, and tuned up again after a move to California.Sun, 02 Mar 2025 23:43:20 GMThttps://www.half-built-robots.com/2025/02/24/the-thing-about-third-reality/https://www.half-built-robots.com/2025/02/24/the-thing-about-third-reality/Generally, I love my Third Reality Smart Switches. I currently have three single-pole light switches configured (garage, kitchen, and hallway)…Mon, 24 Feb 2025 05:57:40 GMThttps://www.half-built-robots.com/2025/02/23/home-automation-may-2022/https://www.half-built-robots.com/2025/02/23/home-automation-may-2022/My goal someday is to have a nearly fully automated smart house with robot butlers serving me drinks on voice…Sun, 23 Feb 2025 21:32:39 GMThttps://www.half-built-robots.com/2025/02/23/the-thing-about-hex-bugs/https://www.half-built-robots.com/2025/02/23/the-thing-about-hex-bugs/A quick break from the semi-rigorous robotics discussion… Hex Bugs were cool. Not just the tiny ones that were only…Sun, 23 Feb 2025 08:09:46 GMThttps://www.half-built-robots.com/2025/02/23/next-steps-with-robotics-kits-parallax-boe-bot/https://www.half-built-robots.com/2025/02/23/next-steps-with-robotics-kits-parallax-boe-bot/After I worked with the LEGO Mindstorms kit (see my post here), I moved on to BOE-Bot, an educational robotics kit…Sun, 23 Feb 2025 06:06:10 GMThttps://www.half-built-robots.com/2025/02/23/next-steps-with-robotics-kits-lego-mindstorms/https://www.half-built-robots.com/2025/02/23/next-steps-with-robotics-kits-lego-mindstorms/A disclaimer before I begin. My thoughts on robotics kits are limited and dated. Limited…Sun, 23 Feb 2025 06:00:37 GMThttps://www.half-built-robots.com/2025/02/23/my-intro-to-robots-beam-robotics/https://www.half-built-robots.com/2025/02/23/my-intro-to-robots-beam-robotics/What is BEAM robotics anyway? When I first started robotics, I was quite intimidated by the concept of programming. My…Sun, 23 Feb 2025 05:30:37 GMThttps://www.half-built-robots.com/2025/02/23/to-new-beginnings-and-restarting-the-blog-attempt-4/https://www.half-built-robots.com/2025/02/23/to-new-beginnings-and-restarting-the-blog-attempt-4/Some of my old robots. Left to right: YAM, Beta Rex, RoverBot, BOE-Bot, Hex Larva, Solar Roller, Symet, NoBB, Spinbot, SymFlower, Beetles, Herbie, and lastly Bubbles.Sun, 23 Feb 2025 04:11:00 GMT