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HB Robotics Knowledge Base

A canonical collection of short, practical articles for robot builders using ROS 2, from strong beginners through senior practitioners.

This is a living site. It is meant to grow through pull requests, source review, and ongoing revision as ROS 2 practice changes and the collection becomes more useful.

Each article:

  • points to a stronger original source
  • summarizes the technical value of that source
  • connects the topic to nearby robotics problems through tags and related links

Start With the Problem You Have

Most readers do not arrive wanting a chapter. They arrive wanting the next useful click.

Explore Notes

If you want the site to behave more like a digital garden than a manual, start with Solve a Problem. Those note pages are designed to get from a concrete robotics problem to likely answers, then outward into background and adjacent topics worth learning next.

Contributing

Contributions are part of the design of this site, not an afterthought. The expected workflow is simple: copy the article template into your preferred editor, fill it in carefully, and submit a pull request.

If you want the full workflow, a short example, and writing guidance, start with Contributing. If you want the template directly, go to Article Template.

Topic Hubs

Foundations

Core mental models and system concepts that underpin all ROS 2 development.

Start with ROS 2 Core Communication and Execution, then TF2 Transforms and Lookups in Practice, Coordinate Frames, REP 105, and Navigation, and URDF as a Frame Translation System.

Nav2, behavior trees, path planning, and goal handling.

Start with Nav2 Architecture and Tuning Guide, Nav2 Servers and Data Flow, Nav2 Costmap Architecture and Plugin Order, and Localization, State Estimation, and Frame Discipline.

Perception

Cameras, depth sensors, point clouds, LIDAR pipelines, and the perception products that other subsystems can actually use.

Start with Vision, Depth, and LIDAR Pipelines for ROS 2 Robots, then Camera Calibration for ROS 2, Depth Cameras for Navigation and Mapping, and Object Detection Pipelines in ROS 2.

Hardware

Sensors, actuators, microcontrollers, serial interfaces, and odometry.

Start with ROS 2 Hardware Integration Patterns, then Serial Protocols Between ROS 2 and Microcontrollers and Odometry Calibration for Diff-Drive.

Calibration-heavy robots should also jump to Calibration Workflows for Mobile Robots.

Software

ROS 2 software architecture: launch files, nodes, parameters, and lifecycle.

Start with Writing rclpy Nodes in ROS 2, Writing rclcpp Nodes in ROS 2, and Launch Files: Patterns and Pitfalls.

When the system is slow in ways logs cannot explain, continue with ros2_tracing and Performance Analysis.

DevOps

Workspace management, colcon builds, overlays, and CI practices.

Start with Simulation, Testing, and Deployment for ROS 2, Colcon Workspace Discipline for Faster ROS 2 Iteration, and Bootstrapping a Jazzy Workspace.

Browse by Tag

See the Tags index to find articles by topic.

About This Site

This knowledge base is the canonical public HB Robotics reference for curated, Git-backed technical documentation. Articles are derived from public sources and summarized for practical value. The source repository is kept Markdown-first so it remains useful as a GitHub repo, an Obsidian vault, and this published site simultaneously.

It is also intentionally editorial rather than encyclopedic. The goal is not to restate all documentation. The goal is to help someone building a robot understand what matters, what usually goes wrong, and what to read next.