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summer robotics challenge

Three months, an XLerobot, and a weekly build log. Following the Robotics Nation challenge from kickoff in Otaniemi (13 Jun) through demo day (13 Sep), and maybe Robotgames in October.

jun to sep 2026 · weekly updates
week 5: ditch the headset

vr teleop still shook, so i swapped to leader–follower. “go to a5” works. grasp training in parallel. also talking to people i’m not ready to name yet.

week 4: seeing in millimeters

back from vacation, a reprinted gripper, an orbbec depth camera, and chess board perception that finally reads 64/64.

week 3: gone chilling (in greece)

no robots, no jetson, no chess. just an island, a lot of tzatziki, and zero commits. the most productive week of the summer.

week 2: gripped by reality

first vr teleop on meta quest, a custom parallel gripper, destroyed screws, and building a chess robot for remote play.

week 1: no display, no problem

ssh into a headless jetson, split the video stack, find the example code is broken, and fix it with a cpu vs gpu experiment.

week 0: it's a hot bot summer

kickoff day in otaniemi: hardware handoff, the challenge ahead, and why i'm writing here every week for the next twelve.