Rustlab for Robotics Competitios

Agenda

• Workshop goals
• This repo
• Something about me
• Robotics competitions
• Embedded Rust 101
• Meet your robot
• Embassy
• Hello Blink
• Hello World
• Digital read
• Analog read
• PWM output
• Tasks and messages (Ping Pong)
• WIFI: list access points
• WIFI: join a network
• TCP client
• Robotic sumo
• More on async embedded rust

Workshop goals

• giving you a taste of embedded Rust
• with concrete tasks
• learning by writing code (minimal frontal teaching)
• having fun

This repo

• bot: the robot code (code that runs on the robot)
• bot-msg: a message broker that we can use to coordinate the competition (runs on the PC)
• bot-3d: the 3d plans for the robot body

Something about me

• passionate software engineer
• mostly did systems programming
• also as a JIT compiler engineer (Mono, Unity3D, V8 in the Google team)
• for me Rust is a natural choice :-)

Robotics competitions

• definitely not the RC-controlled "destroy the opponent" kind
• robots are autonomous
• hobby: relatively cheap off the shelf components
• the competition is friendly
• high educational value
• I learned Rust this way!

Embedded Rust 101

• say no to:
  • operating systems
  • imposed runtime environments
  • the standard library
• say yes to:
  • bare-metal programming
  • complete hardware control
  • the core library
• your code stays safe

Meet your robot

• let's call it Froggy
• maybe you'll curse it as "Miopic Frog"...
• Raspberry PI Pico W
  • rp2040 CPU
  • a WIFI-capable "coprocessor"
• a board with:
  • a power regulator
  • two motor drivers
  • no-soldering connectors
• two IR-reflection digital distance sensors
• one IR-reflection analog "color" (BW) sensor
• two motors and two wheels
• one power back as power supply

Embassy

• Embassy what?
  • an async framework for embedded Rust
• async why?
  • well... only Embassy has a driver for this WIFI chip
  • I preferred doing this workshop with "mainstream" Rust
  • I ended up loving Embassy!
• we'll see why

Hello Blink

Let's blink a led

Hello World

Let's write something over the USB wire so we can read it on our development machine (note that we do not use a debugging probe)

Digital read

Let's read the status of a digital pin

Analog read

Let's read the status of an analog pin

PWM output

Let's generate an electrical signal that can stimulate the motor drivers so that the motors will move

Tasks and messages (Ping Pong)

Async-based cooperative multitasking, synchronizing tasks using messages

WIFI: list access points

Test the WIFI hardware by listing the mearby access points

WIFI: join a network

Test the WIFI hardware by connecting to a network

TCP client

Connect to a TCP server and write something to it

And now?

• get back to our original goal: make these robots fight each other
• no robot will be harmed in the process
• understand robotic sumo
• have fun!
• also, understand async embedded rust by writing logging code