Earlier this month, our software team had the chance to visit Main Street Autonomy, a Pittsburgh-based company that specializes in calibration, localization, and mapping software. Unlike some of our recent visits that focused more on hardware, this experience gave us the opportunity to dive deep into the software side of robotics.
We met with six of their software engineers, including CEO Jake Panikulm, who took time out of their day to share what they do and how they solve real-world challenges.
For our team, it was exciting to see how the concepts we’re learning in FTC connect directly to what professionals are doing in the field. The engineers talked about the importance of calibration which is something we want to work more on this season with our robot.
What stood out most was how passionate everyone at Main Street Autonomy was about their work. Their energy made us even more motivated to keep pushing ourselves to learn new programming skills and explore advanced software concepts.
The engineers also took a look at our Into The Deep season robot and provided us with valuable feedback. We were glad to have experts to talk to about our software implementations on our robot.
We left the visit not only with a better understanding of how software drives innovation in robotics, but also with a new sense of direction for our robot this season. A huge thank-you to Jake and the entire Main Street Autonomy team for welcoming us and sharing their expertise.