November News Update - Boston Robot Hackers

Here are some really really important announcements that everyone will want to read.

Next Main Meeting

First off, check out our next Main Meeting - It's a double header! We have a short presentation by Husan Mavlonov about Robots for Connector Assembly. And then Yun Chang's talk on Robot Scene Understanding for Extreme Environments: from subterranean to heavy equipment. See: November Main Meeting

Next Hands-On Meeting

Our next Hands-on is happening the day before: Wednesday, November 11, 2026, 6:00 to 9:00pm as usual at Artisans Asylum (96 Holton Street, Boston, MA 02135) Remember, these meetings are informal, work, play, learn and teach from each other. We will likely be talking about the Build-A-ROSbot program. Bring your robot, your kit, or your questions. Beginners welcome!

A Fixed Schedule

I've had the impression that the scheduling of our meetings was hard to follow. So, with the help of Artisans Asylum, from now on our meetings should be easier to keep track of:

Main meetings are on the second Thursday of every month, 7:00 to 9:00pm.
Hands-on meetings are on the second Wednesday of every month, the night before.

Both are at Artisans Asylum. Put them in your calendar! Even better, if you are inclined, subscribe to this link in your calendar and you will always have the latest.

Coming Up: December and January

We have a great lineup of speakers.

December 10: Addisu Taddese, lead maintainer of Gazebo, on what it's like to build a robot simulator used by thousands of people around the world.
January 14: Tully Foote, Open Source Lead at Intrinsic and one of the early ROS developers at Willow Garage, on the newly open-sourced Intrinsic Core.

More speakers are being arranged right now.

Build-A-ROSBot Is Getting Started

Build-A-ROSBot is getting started. Over a series of hands-on sessions, each participant builds a small ROS-based robot and learns ROS2 along the way. Show your interest here, but remember that it will require a baseline of Python programming, and shell and command line facility. Without that I fear you will be frustrated.