Unfinished Creations, Unbridled Innovation.https://www.half-built-robots.com/https://www.half-built-robots.com/2026/09/15/robot-edits-blog-a-ticket-tray-for-drafts/https://www.half-built-robots.com/2026/09/15/robot-edits-blog-a-ticket-tray-for-drafts/What happens when you token max to the point where you aren't even willing to open a text editor to write your blog anymore? Well, I built a human-LLM loop for such a workflow. This post is part of my…Tue, 15 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.half-built-robots.com/2026/09/09/robot-packages-blog-extracting-a-design-system/https://www.half-built-robots.com/2026/09/09/robot-packages-blog-extracting-a-design-system/Part 1 got the posts out of WordPress. Part 2 got the build onto Cloudflare Pages. Both of those ended with a blog that lives in a git repo and a theme that lives in that same repo, tangled up with…Wed, 09 Sep 2026 22:30:00 GMThttps://www.half-built-robots.com/2026/08/30/robots-in-the-wild-roomba-2022/https://www.half-built-robots.com/2026/08/30/robots-in-the-wild-roomba-2022/I bought an iRobot Roomba i7+ in 2021 to clean the one bedroom flat I had just moved into. It has served well since. It has moved apartments with me twice and shows up in both my 2022 and 2025 home…Sun, 30 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.half-built-robots.com/2026/08/30/yam-a-ship-of-theseus-half-built-robot/https://www.half-built-robots.com/2026/08/30/yam-a-ship-of-theseus-half-built-robot/YAM is short for Your Automated Machine (I started with YAM and needed to find some way to justify it). It started as an old dehumidifier that I gutted to its shell and then rebuilt as a mobile robot…Sun, 30 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.half-built-robots.com/2026/08/29/esp8266-hacked-grow-light-with-okos-polip-device-to-cloud-service/https://www.half-built-robots.com/2026/08/29/esp8266-hacked-grow-light-with-okos-polip-device-to-cloud-service/My avocado tree started life under a cheap clip-on grow light from Amazon. The tree is five years old now and much grown. Back in my 2022 home automation post I put the grow light first in line for…Sat, 29 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.half-built-robots.com/2026/08/29/time-in-the-people-and-robots-lab/https://www.half-built-robots.com/2026/08/29/time-in-the-people-and-robots-lab/I started my Master's in Computer Science at UW-Madison in the fall of 2018 and graduated in the spring of 2021. I spent most of it in the People and Robots Lab under Dr. Bilge Mutlu, studying how…Sat, 29 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.half-built-robots.com/2026/08/27/ar-ux-on-the-ur3e/https://www.half-built-robots.com/2026/08/27/ar-ux-on-the-ur3e/After the interaction paradigms studies had run (the paper was on simmer) and Authr was built (that paper was simmering too), one question was still hanging. Put a physical robot arm in front of an…Thu, 27 Aug 2026 15:00:00 GMThttps://www.half-built-robots.com/2026/08/27/real-time-inverse-kinematics-on-a-ur5/https://www.half-built-robots.com/2026/08/27/real-time-inverse-kinematics-on-a-ur5/The UR5 is where I learned the Universal Robots stack. I had already played with MoveIt and ROS on the lab's Kinova Mico. Once I proved that I could handle a robot arm I was given access to the UR5…Thu, 27 Aug 2026 12:00:00 GMThttps://www.half-built-robots.com/2026/08/27/moveit-on-a-kinova-mico/https://www.half-built-robots.com/2026/08/27/moveit-on-a-kinova-mico/The Kinova Mico is where I learned MoveIt and basic ROS. It was slow. It was janky. But I learned how to control an arm, which was pretty cool. The nice thing about the Kinova from an HCI perspective…Thu, 27 Aug 2026 09:00:00 GMThttps://www.half-built-robots.com/2026/08/27/okos-polip-my-device-to-cloud-service/https://www.half-built-robots.com/2026/08/27/okos-polip-my-device-to-cloud-service/Okos Polip is the device-to-cloud service I built for my own hacked devices. You might be wondering why that odd name? Well okos is smart in Hungarian and polip is octopus. A smart octopus with a…Thu, 27 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.half-built-robots.com/2026/08/23/taltos-oid-the-sixth-finger-seven-years-on/https://www.half-built-robots.com/2026/08/23/taltos-oid-the-sixth-finger-seven-years-on/TL;DR: In 2019 I built a robotic sixth finger, named it after a Hungarian shaman, and then, during debugging, put it inside a plastic box because I had decided it was trying to get away from me. I…Sun, 23 Aug 2026 15:30:00 GMThttps://www.half-built-robots.com/2026/08/23/taltosoid-a-supernumerary-robotic-finger/https://www.half-built-robots.com/2026/08/23/taltosoid-a-supernumerary-robotic-finger/Táltos is the shaman of Hungarian mythology, and one of the traits that supposedly marked someone as a táltos was being born with a physical abnormality, like an extra finger. So a Táltos-oid is a…Sun, 23 Aug 2026 15:00:00 GMThttps://www.half-built-robots.com/2026/08/22/robot-ships-blog-astro-to-cloudflare-pages/https://www.half-built-robots.com/2026/08/22/robot-ships-blog-astro-to-cloudflare-pages/Part 1 was the long road out of WordPress. This is the short road onto Cloudflare Pages, and it is short mostly because Pages doesn't leave you much to do. You connect the repo, tell it the build…Sat, 22 Aug 2026 15:30:00 GMThttps://www.half-built-robots.com/2026/08/22/robot-migrates-blog-how-i-used-claude-to-leave-wordpress/https://www.half-built-robots.com/2026/08/22/robot-migrates-blog-how-i-used-claude-to-leave-wordpress/In the cutover post I said that if I did my job right, you couldn't tell the blog changed engines. What I glossed over is how much of that job was actually mine. A large portion of the mechanical…Sat, 22 Aug 2026 15:00:00 GMThttps://www.half-built-robots.com/2026/08/20/same-blog-new-engine-moving-from-wordpress-to-astro/https://www.half-built-robots.com/2026/08/20/same-blog-new-engine-moving-from-wordpress-to-astro/The blog you are reading is no longer WordPress. As of this week, half-built-robots is a static site built with Astro and served from Cloudflare. If I did my job right, you shouldn't be able to tell…Thu, 20 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.half-built-robots.com/2026/02/17/paper-notes-teaching-novices-to-think-like-cobot-experts/https://www.half-built-robots.com/2026/02/17/paper-notes-teaching-novices-to-think-like-cobot-experts/A cobot on a factory floor is only as good as the person programming it. The people who are good at that have been doing it for years, and most operators are not those people. There is a persistent…Tue, 17 Feb 2026 13:37:44 GMThttps://www.half-built-robots.com/2026/02/17/paper-notes-converting-manual-work-into-human-robot-teamwork/https://www.half-built-robots.com/2026/02/17/paper-notes-converting-manual-work-into-human-robot-teamwork/Most manufacturing work was designed for a pair of human hands. Put a cobot on the line and someone has to take that work apart and decide which pieces go to the robot and which stay with the person…Tue, 17 Feb 2026 10:50:43 GMThttps://www.half-built-robots.com/2026/02/17/paper-notes-helping-operators-keep-up-with-collaborative-robots/https://www.half-built-robots.com/2026/02/17/paper-notes-helping-operators-keep-up-with-collaborative-robots/Working next to a cobot means sharing a task with a machine that runs on its own for a while and then needs you. The robot’s half takes care of itself. The hard part is guessing when your half is…Tue, 17 Feb 2026 09:30:43 GMThttps://www.half-built-robots.com/2026/02/17/teaching-a-gan-to-draw/https://www.half-built-robots.com/2026/02/17/teaching-a-gan-to-draw/Back in Fall 2018, I took CS 534 (Computational Photography) at UW-Madison. The term project was open-ended, so naturally my team and I decided to see if we could get a neural network to generate…Tue, 17 Feb 2026 06:21:11 GMThttps://www.half-built-robots.com/2026/02/17/teaching-a-robot-to-find-blocks/https://www.half-built-robots.com/2026/02/17/teaching-a-robot-to-find-blocks/When you’re working on human-robot interaction research, there’s a surprisingly mundane problem that keeps showing up. The robot needs to know where things are. Specifically, in our case, the robot…Tue, 17 Feb 2026 05:33:47 GMThttps://www.half-built-robots.com/2026/02/17/real-time-inverse-kinematics-on-a-ur3e/https://www.half-built-robots.com/2026/02/17/real-time-inverse-kinematics-on-a-ur3e/During my Master’s in Computer Science at UW-Madison, I spent most of my time in the People and Robots Lab working on human-robot interaction research under Dr. Bilge Mutlu. The lab had a UR3e cobot…Tue, 17 Feb 2026 05:10:43 GMThttps://www.half-built-robots.com/2026/02/17/turning-robot-motion-into-fluid-art/https://www.half-built-robots.com/2026/02/17/turning-robot-motion-into-fluid-art/I found a 2D WebGL fluid simulation on GitHub’s trending page one Friday afternoon and lost about twenty minutes clicking around the canvas watching colors swirl. I forgot what I was actually doing…Tue, 17 Feb 2026 04:35:42 GMThttps://www.half-built-robots.com/2026/02/17/giving-an-ir-led-strip-a-rest-api/https://www.half-built-robots.com/2026/02/17/giving-an-ir-led-strip-a-rest-api/Back in undergrad, when I set up the LED strip around my apartment’s living room window, I thought the little IR remote it came with was fine. Point, click, color changes. Simple. Then I lost the…Tue, 17 Feb 2026 02:50:24 GMThttps://www.half-built-robots.com/2026/01/15/robots-in-the-wild-unicorn-gundam-2026/https://www.half-built-robots.com/2026/01/15/robots-in-the-wild-unicorn-gundam-2026/This past January (2026) my husband and I flew from the Bay Area to Tokyo for two weeks. The first week was vacation. We took the Shinkansen down to Osaka and came back up to Tokyo. I specifically put…Thu, 15 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.half-built-robots.com/2025/10/12/robots-in-the-wild-mall-mech-2023/https://www.half-built-robots.com/2025/10/12/robots-in-the-wild-mall-mech-2023/July 2023, I was in Minneapolis for the Microscopy and Microanalysis (M&M) conference for my employer. After I wrapped up, my husband (boyfriend at the time) and I went to the Mall of America. First…Sun, 12 Oct 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.half-built-robots.com/2025/08/10/robots-in-the-wild-combat-arenas-2023/https://www.half-built-robots.com/2025/08/10/robots-in-the-wild-combat-arenas-2023/This was RoboGames in Pleasanton, April 2023. Practically in my backyard, since I work in Pleasanton and lived in Dublin at the time. I went with my boyfriend (now husband). I had wanted to go to one…Sun, 10 Aug 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.half-built-robots.com/2025/04/07/the-thing-about-a-covid19-laptop-server-rack/https://www.half-built-robots.com/2025/04/07/the-thing-about-a-covid19-laptop-server-rack/This was a small project right at the start of COVID-19, where I needed two Universal Robots UR3e robot arms under ROS control. It was early lockdown, so there was no way I was getting into the lab…Mon, 07 Apr 2025 02:39:18 GMThttps://www.half-built-robots.com/2025/04/06/bubbles-the-arduino-dog-robot-with-an-xbee-radio-part-1/https://www.half-built-robots.com/2025/04/06/bubbles-the-arduino-dog-robot-with-an-xbee-radio-part-1/Bubbles wasn’t always in such a sorry state. He (originally a she) was a gift my little sister received (for Christmas or birthday, I forget which). The toy line was Hasbro’s FurReal Friends GoGo My…Sun, 06 Apr 2025 09:43:25 GMThttps://www.half-built-robots.com/2025/03/26/home-automation-setup-2025/https://www.half-built-robots.com/2025/03/26/home-automation-setup-2025/It has been a few years since I did a home automation update (see my 2022 update) and a lot has changed. I moved (twice), got some new devices, have both Google Home and Alexa agents, and started work…Wed, 26 Mar 2025 13:07:44 GMThttps://www.half-built-robots.com/2025/03/24/esp8266-hacked-koios-air-filter-using-okos-polip-device-to-cloud-service/https://www.half-built-robots.com/2025/03/24/esp8266-hacked-koios-air-filter-using-okos-polip-device-to-cloud-service/When I moved out to the Bay Area (California), I purchased a small KOIOS air filter to keep the wildfire smoke at a reasonable level in my (at the time) one-bedroom apartment. After a while, I…Mon, 24 Mar 2025 07:30:50 GMThttps://www.half-built-robots.com/2025/03/20/robots-in-the-wild-robot-coffee-kiosk-2022/https://www.half-built-robots.com/2025/03/20/robots-in-the-wild-robot-coffee-kiosk-2022/January 2022, this was at the San Francisco Premium Outlets in Livermore. I went with my husband (boyfriend at the time) early in our relationship. I had just moved out to the Bay Area (Dublin) in…Thu, 20 Mar 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.half-built-robots.com/2025/03/16/orion-a-robust-mobile-base/https://www.half-built-robots.com/2025/03/16/orion-a-robust-mobile-base/Orion was a project I tackled in undergrad. I wanted to build a mobile base that could be used for experimentation (and I wanted it to be sturdy). Plus I had just gotten access to a makerspace and…Sun, 16 Mar 2025 13:36:23 GMThttps://www.half-built-robots.com/2025/03/10/home-automation-setup-approx-2017/https://www.half-built-robots.com/2025/03/10/home-automation-setup-approx-2017/This is a short retrospective post on my home automation setup back in undergrad at MSOE. Unfortunately this was not well documented, but it was an interesting start to my home automation tinkering…Mon, 10 Mar 2025 14:20:44 GMThttps://www.half-built-robots.com/2025/03/10/triclops-the-spinbot-learning-from-failure/https://www.half-built-robots.com/2025/03/10/triclops-the-spinbot-learning-from-failure/Triclops is another one of my incomplete projects. It started while I was a freshman at Milwaukee School of Engineering. My goal was to build a Spinbot: a single motor robot that modulates its speed…Mon, 10 Mar 2025 12:46:25 GMThttps://www.half-built-robots.com/2025/03/02/building-roverbot-an-arduino-based-robot/https://www.half-built-robots.com/2025/03/02/building-roverbot-an-arduino-based-robot/RoverBot is an RC car hack gone wrong (but with plenty of lessons learned along the way). To set the scene, I was in early high school, having built a few BEAM robots and finished up the LEGO…Sun, 02 Mar 2025 23:43:20 GMThttps://www.half-built-robots.com/2025/02/26/robots-in-the-wild-kuri-2019/https://www.half-built-robots.com/2025/02/26/robots-in-the-wild-kuri-2019/The People and Robots Lab at UW-Madison (formerly the HCI Lab) got two of these for free from Mayfield Robotics. We never did anything with them except let them roam the floor. They would make their…Wed, 26 Feb 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.half-built-robots.com/2025/02/24/the-thing-about-third-reality/https://www.half-built-robots.com/2025/02/24/the-thing-about-third-reality/Generally, I love my Third Reality Smart Switches. I currently have three single-pole light switches configured (garage, kitchen, and hallway) and a three-way light switch for the stairs, all without…Mon, 24 Feb 2025 05:57:40 GMThttps://www.half-built-robots.com/2025/02/23/home-automation-may-2022/https://www.half-built-robots.com/2025/02/23/home-automation-may-2022/My goal someday is to have a nearly fully automated smart house with robot butlers serving me drinks on voice command. Unfortunately I am not there yet. I do, however, have a start to my home…Sun, 23 Feb 2025 21:32:39 GMThttps://www.half-built-robots.com/2025/02/23/the-thing-about-hex-bugs/https://www.half-built-robots.com/2025/02/23/the-thing-about-hex-bugs/A quick break from the semi-rigorous robotics discussion… Hex Bugs (officially HEXBUG) were cool. Not just the tiny ones that were only bristles and a vibromotor, but the slightly larger toys…Sun, 23 Feb 2025 08:09:46 GMThttps://www.half-built-robots.com/2025/02/23/next-steps-with-robotics-kits-parallax-boe-bot/https://www.half-built-robots.com/2025/02/23/next-steps-with-robotics-kits-parallax-boe-bot/After I worked with the LEGO Mindstorms kit (see my post here), I moved on to BOE-Bot, an educational robotics kit that teaches basic electric circuits and robot control. I picked up my kit at the Boy…Sun, 23 Feb 2025 06:06:10 GMThttps://www.half-built-robots.com/2025/02/23/next-steps-with-robotics-kits-lego-mindstorms/https://www.half-built-robots.com/2025/02/23/next-steps-with-robotics-kits-lego-mindstorms/A disclaimer before I begin. My thoughts on robotics kits are limited and dated. Limited in the sense that I started without kits, building simple robots, and then after kits quickly moved on to…Sun, 23 Feb 2025 06:00:37 GMThttps://www.half-built-robots.com/2025/02/23/my-intro-to-robots-beam-robotics/https://www.half-built-robots.com/2025/02/23/my-intro-to-robots-beam-robotics/When I first started robotics, I was quite intimidated by the concept of programming. My understanding was informed by the Hollywood stereotype with a sulking nerd character striking keys quicker than…Sun, 23 Feb 2025 05:30:37 GMThttps://www.half-built-robots.com/2025/02/23/robots-in-the-wild-asimo-2014/https://www.half-built-robots.com/2025/02/23/robots-in-the-wild-asimo-2014/This blurry photo has been sitting on a hard drive for a decade. It was August 2014 at Oshkosh AirVenture when I went to the Honda booth. Out walks ASIMO. Teen Curt's mind was blown. A walking robot…Sun, 23 Feb 2025 04:30:00 GMThttps://www.half-built-robots.com/2025/02/23/to-new-beginnings-and-restarting-the-blog-attempt-4/https://www.half-built-robots.com/2025/02/23/to-new-beginnings-and-restarting-the-blog-attempt-4/This time the blog thing will work out (probably not, but I am here for the ride at this point). As the title states, I am restarting this blog for the fourth time. I first started blogging under the…Sun, 23 Feb 2025 04:11:00 GMT