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.
rosbag in Field Testing: What to Record, What It Costs and How to Replay It
What to record with ros2 bag during field tests, how much storage an hour of data really takes and how…
Read more Nav2 Behavior Trees: Customising Robot Behaviour Without Forking the Stack
Customise Nav2 behaviour without forking the stack: swap the behavior tree XML, write a custom BT node in C++ and…
Read more Depth Camera or 3D LiDAR for Outdoor Mobile Robots: An Honest Comparison
Depth camera or 3D LiDAR for an outdoor robot? A straight comparison of range, sunlight tolerance, dust, cost and compute…
Read more Jetson Orin Nano on a UGV: Power Budget, Thermals and What Runs in Real Time
Can a Jetson Orin Nano run perception on a small UGV? Power profiles, thermal behaviour in a closed enclosure and…
Read more ZED 2i on a Mobile Robot: Full ROS 2 Integration, Calibration and First SLAM Run
ZED 2i on a mobile robot in ROS 2: installing the ZED SDK on a Jetson, binding the wrapper to…
Read more Why Your RTK Fix Drops in the Field: Multipath, Sky View and Baseline Length
Five reasons an RTK fix drops in the field, from multipath and blocked sky view to NTRIP dropouts and faulty…
Read more RTK Base Station vs Rover: Two Meanings of One Word in GNSS
Base station or rover? What each RTK unit does, when you need your own base instead of an NTRIP service,…
Read more How to Add RTK GPS to a Small Mobile Robot: A Complete ROS 2 Setup
Adding RTK GPS to a small mobile robot step by step: choosing a receiver, mounting the antenna properly, getting RTCM…
Read more LiDAR SLAM in Open Terrain: Benchmarking Three SLAM Algorithms on One Rover
How to compare slam_toolbox, LIO-SAM and RTAB-Map fairly on one rover in open terrain: shared rosbags, a valid reference trajectory…
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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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