During the winter semester 17/18 I took a course called “Multi-sensory Based Dynamic Robot Manipulation” at the Institute for Cognitive Systems at the Technical University of Munich where I am currently pursuing my masters degree in robotics. The course was one of the best I’ve had in my university career which is mainly because Mr. Dean, our lecturer, did such a great job. It was sometimes painfully hard to get the homework done because I had to learn so many new things at the same time. Coding in C++, using Ubuntu and ROS, control theory, robot dynamics and kinematics… The course had a final project in the end which I did together with two other people in a team. ...

I was lucky that in my high school we had a Robotics Group led by a passionate physics and math teacher. For me it was an awesome experience which defined the last four years of my time in high school. As a team we participated in the RoboCup Junior Soccer competition, starting with simple LEGO NXTs in 2007 and finally becoming German Champions in 2011 with highly sophisticated custom machines. Below are some pictures which show the evolution of our project. We built robots that played 2vs2 soccer on a table sized playing field. ...

Through a university course on robotics I got introduced to the so called Robot Operating System (ROS). And it got me hooked! The Robot Operating System (ROS) is a set of software libraries and tools that help you build robot applications. From drivers to state-of-the-art algorithms, and with powerful developer tools, ROS has what you need for your next robotics project. And it’s all open source. After building football robots during my high school days, this was a great opportunity to gain some more hands-on experience. ...