{"id":998,"date":"2026-07-15T11:09:27","date_gmt":"2026-07-15T10:09:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/schools.stem.open.ac.uk\/knowledge-media-institute\/?page_id=998"},"modified":"2026-07-15T11:09:27","modified_gmt":"2026-07-15T10:09:27","slug":"robot-capabilities-and-models-or-how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-robotics","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/schools.stem.open.ac.uk\/knowledge-media-institute\/robot-capabilities-and-models-or-how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-robotics\/","title":{"rendered":"Robot capabilities and models or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Robotics"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"wp-block-group is-nowrap is-layout-flex wp-container-core-group-is-layout-8f761849 wp-block-group-is-layout-flex\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/stadium.open.ac.uk\/stadia\/stadia\/speakerimages\/3413.jpg\" alt=\" Gianluca Bardaro\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Gianluca Bardaro<br><small>This event took place on Friday 14 July 2017 at 11:30<\/small><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><br>Complex&nbsp; robotic systems&nbsp;integrating advanced hardware components and sophisticated algorithms&nbsp;are&nbsp;nowadays&nbsp; gaining in&nbsp;popularity, thanks to the widespread use of robotic&nbsp; middlewares such as&nbsp;the Robot Operating System (ROS), whose aim is&nbsp; to&nbsp;relieve&nbsp;developers from the&nbsp;management of&nbsp;low-level components (i.e., communication, synchronization, drivers). As a direct&nbsp; consequence, the world of robotics is being approached by domain-experts&nbsp; with other&nbsp;backgrounds, which&nbsp;are often less interested in the robot as&nbsp; a system, while focusing more on specific robot&nbsp;capabilities. While they could all greatly contribute to the robotic community, a&nbsp; considerable amount of&nbsp;effort is&nbsp;still spent in&nbsp;learning how to&nbsp; efficiently&nbsp;use&nbsp;ROS&nbsp;to develop a fully-fledged robotic system.&nbsp;<br>In&nbsp; this talk, we will present multiple solutions that can be used to simplify and streamline robot&nbsp; software development. The problem will be approached on two different&nbsp; levels: high-level applications,&nbsp;such as&nbsp;commanding a robot to patrol an&nbsp; area, and fine-grained implementation, e.g.&nbsp;embedding existing algorithms in specific&nbsp;ROS components. I will show&nbsp; the&nbsp;continuity between these&nbsp;two different approaches, not&nbsp; only&nbsp;outlining how they could&nbsp;benefit from each other, but also how&nbsp; they&nbsp;could make robotics more accessible for experts from different&nbsp; fields.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"http:\/\/stadium.open.ac.uk\/stadia\/preview.php?s=29&amp;whichevent=2912\">Watch the webcast replay &gt;&gt;<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"https:\/\/schools.stem.open.ac.uk\/knowledge-media-institute\/past-seminars\/\">View all past events<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-group is-nowrap is-layout-flex wp-container-core-group-is-layout-8f761849 wp-block-group-is-layout-flex\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full has-custom-css wp-custom-css-ac9b5317\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"213\" height=\"246\" src=\"https:\/\/schools.stem.open.ac.uk\/knowledge-media-institute\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2026\/07\/image-2.png\" alt=\"Maven of the Month\" class=\"wp-image-537\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-group is-vertical is-layout-flex wp-container-core-group-is-layout-4fc3f8e1 wp-block-group-is-layout-flex\">\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><a href=\"https:\/\/schools.stem.open.ac.uk\/knowledge-media-institute\/maven-of-the-month\/\">Maven of the Month<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We are also inviting top experts in AI and Knowledge Technologies to discuss major socio-technological topics with an audience that comprises both members of the Knowledge Media Institute, as well as the wider staff at The Open University. Differently from our seminar series, these events follow a Q&amp;A format.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Gianluca BardaroThis event took place on Friday 14 July 2017 at 11:30 Complex&nbsp; robotic systems&nbsp;integrating advanced hardware components and sophisticated algorithms&nbsp;are&nbsp;nowadays&nbsp; gaining in&nbsp;popularity, thanks to the widespread use of robotic&nbsp; middlewares such as&nbsp;the Robot Operating System (ROS), whose aim is&nbsp; to&nbsp;relieve&nbsp;developers from the&nbsp;management of&nbsp;low-level components (i.e., communication, synchronization, drivers). As a direct&nbsp; consequence, the world [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"unity_related_person":[],"unity_sdg":[],"unity_research_theme":[],"unity_strategic_priority":[],"unity_enabler":[],"unity_general_category":[],"unity_stem_unit":[],"unity_related_project":[],"unity_related_archived_project":[],"unity_related_event":[],"class_list":["post-998","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/schools.stem.open.ac.uk\/knowledge-media-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/998","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/schools.stem.open.ac.uk\/knowledge-media-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/schools.stem.open.ac.uk\/knowledge-media-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/schools.stem.open.ac.uk\/knowledge-media-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/schools.stem.open.ac.uk\/knowledge-media-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=998"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/schools.stem.open.ac.uk\/knowledge-media-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/998\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":999,"href":"https:\/\/schools.stem.open.ac.uk\/knowledge-media-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/998\/revisions\/999"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/schools.stem.open.ac.uk\/knowledge-media-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=998"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"unity_related_person","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/schools.stem.open.ac.uk\/knowledge-media-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/unity_related_person?post=998"},{"taxonomy":"unity_sdg","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/schools.stem.open.ac.uk\/knowledge-media-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/unity_sdg?post=998"},{"taxonomy":"unity_research_theme","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/schools.stem.open.ac.uk\/knowledge-media-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/unity_research_theme?post=998"},{"taxonomy":"unity_strategic_priority","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/schools.stem.open.ac.uk\/knowledge-media-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/unity_strategic_priority?post=998"},{"taxonomy":"unity_enabler","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/schools.stem.open.ac.uk\/knowledge-media-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/unity_enabler?post=998"},{"taxonomy":"unity_general_category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/schools.stem.open.ac.uk\/knowledge-media-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/unity_general_category?post=998"},{"taxonomy":"unity_stem_unit","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/schools.stem.open.ac.uk\/knowledge-media-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/unity_stem_unit?post=998"},{"taxonomy":"unity_related_project","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/schools.stem.open.ac.uk\/knowledge-media-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/unity_related_project?post=998"},{"taxonomy":"unity_related_archived_project","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/schools.stem.open.ac.uk\/knowledge-media-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/unity_related_archived_project?post=998"},{"taxonomy":"unity_related_event","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/schools.stem.open.ac.uk\/knowledge-media-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/unity_related_event?post=998"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}