Bonsai Robotics: Hardware-agnostic Robotics solutions

Situation

Bonsai Robotics specializes in vision-based automation solutions for machines in the tree growers industry. They were a newly incorporated startup with a small engineering team when they started working with Stogl Robotics. Most of their Robotics stack was not yet written nor defined in detail.

Problem

Bonsai Robotics Team had a deep knowledge of the problem they were solving and a clear vision of what added value their product brings. However, due to the limited size of their team, they sought additional expertise to kickstart their initiatives. Especially in terms of code design and architecture to ensure long-term efficiency and maintainability.

While striving for the highest standards, Bonsai Robotics discovered Štogl Robotics, primarily through their (in their words) remarkable contributions to the ros2_control software stack. This convinced them immediately to reach out to Stogl Robotics, which has proven that it can manage the complexity of various robotics applications and the software behind them.

Solution

For the initial scope of work, Bonsai Robotics requested Stogl Robotics team to architect the control stack for two different kinds of vehicles, enabling the use of the Nav2 software stack out of the box. Since the vehicles have completely different kinematics, in-depth knowledge of the Stogl Robotics team helped to share as much as possible of the code between them. Besides that, Stogl Robotics has implemented full Gazebo Simulation for the vehicles enabling faster development for the Bonsai and direct transfer of control algorithms to the real hardware.

Besides the initial scope of the work, Stogl Robotics has helped to set up and optimize URDF files for the Bonsai’s vehicles, resulting in more realistic and appealing visualization and optimized collisions for simulation.

Finally, the team from Stogl Robotics implemented the initial integration of the Nav2 stack setting up a solid basis for optimizations on the actual vehicles. Besides that, they provide continuous support to Bonsai’s team to efficiently parametrize and set up Nav2 stack as their internal software evolves.

Due to the early phase of the project, Bonsai Robotics asked for many changes along the way. Nevertheless, the experienced team from Stogl Robotics always addressed them efficiently, constantly providing a well-structured plan to move forward. Despite being in different time zones, Stogl Robotics scheduled promptly the meetings when Email communication was not sufficient.

Outcome

Through the support of the Stogl Robotics team, Bonsai Robotics achieved accelerated time to market and established a strong code foundation for their engineers to build upon. Stogl Robotics has demonstrated a thorough understanding and deep expertise in ROS 2, utilizing the knowledge effectively to maintain project momentum and meet deadlines. A structured approach to design and well-written code by Stogl Robotics helps Bonsai’s team to move fast, even months after the end of the project.