Reading Room
The Fictionlab Blog
Explore a mix of technical guides, industry insights, and stories from inside our Robot house. Whether it’s engineering deep dives, business analysis, or the history behind our rover competitions, this is where we share our knowledge and culture.
How to Add RTK GPS to a Small Mobile Robot: A Complete ROS 2 Setup
TL;DR: To add RTK GNSS to a mobile robot in ROS 2, you need a multi-band GNSS receiver (for example…
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LiDAR SLAM in Open Terrain: Benchmarking Three SLAM Algorithms on One Rover
TL;DR: This article describes a reproducible approach to comparing slam_toolbox, LIO-SAM, and RTAB-Map on a single Leo Rover platform in…
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The Unwritten Rules of Robotics Competitions: What Teams Wish They Knew Before Entering
TL;DR: Winning robotics competitions rarely comes down to the most advanced algorithm or the most expensive hardware. Teams that consistently…
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How to Build and Grow a ROS Community at Your University?
TL;DR: Building a ROS university community starts with a small core team, a shared hardware platform, and a recurring workshop…
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What Do Robotics Engineers Actually Do? A Day in the Life at Fictionlab
TL;DR: A typical day for a robotics engineer at Fictionlab mixes ROS 2 development, CAD revisions, soldering, outdoor field tests,…
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From PhD Research to Real Deployment: How Academic Robotics Projects Scale Up
TL;DR: Scaling academic robotics from a PhD prototype to a deployable product is mostly about closing the gap between TRL…
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How to Write a Robotics Research Grant That Actually Gets Approved
TL;DR: A successful robotics research grant proposal connects a specific scientific question to a defensible methodology, a justified hardware stack,…
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Open Source in Robotics: Why It’s Not Just a Philosophy, It’s a Business Model
TL;DR: Open source robotics is a working business model, not a charity. Companies like Fictionlab build commercial mobile robot platforms…
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What to Expect at ICRA, ROSCon, and Other Key Robotics Conferences: A First-Timer’s Guide
TL;DR: ICRA, IROS, ROSCon, RSS, and Humanoids are among the core robotics conferences worth attending if you build mobile robots,…
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How to Set Up a Mobile Robotics Lab from Scratch: Equipment, Budget, and Mistakes to Avoid
TL;DR: A functional mobile robotics lab setup needs four pillars: a reliable UGV platform, a ROS 2 development workstation, a…
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From Simulation to Field: How to Validate Your ROS 2 Stack Before Going Outdoors
TL;DR: Moving a ROS 2 simulation to a real robot fails most often because of unmodeled physics, sensor noise, and…
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WebRTC on Robots: How to Stream Live Video from Your Rover to Any Browser
TL;DR: WebRTC on robots lets you stream live camera feeds from a mobile robot to modern browsers, often with sub-200…
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