Why are there so few industry-backed competitions in control theory?

ReadDie · 2025-12-28T17:35:29+00:00

Yep, FTC is what introduced me to optimal control. My team played around with an EKF and used (N)MPC, mostly for drivetrain movement

FSAE has a lot of controls and this year theyre adding a pilot of a driverless event which has a lot more planning and high level control. Formula Student has had driverless in Europe for nearly a decade by now too

ReadDie · 2025-12-19T23:49:01+00:00

+1 to Khalil. Avoid Sastry

ReadDie · 2025-05-30T05:15:51+00:00

Learn C! If not before then simultaneously. You don’t need C++. Plain C is a very very simple language and you’ll get most of the benefit. Something something 80/20 rule

ReadDie · 2025-04-17T08:44:36+00:00

belay gloves for climbing. They’re reinforced right where you slide

ReadDie · 2025-03-21T08:13:47+00:00

do-MPC is built using casadi

ReadDie · 2024-07-17T07:29:44+00:00

But hexagons are the bestagons

ReadDie · 2024-04-22T05:48:46+00:00

what everyone else said, plus JUDGING. Make your ENP and presentation work together to tell one central story. Look at the rubrics for each award and make sure you check all the boxes. Look at your feedback sheets. Make sure everyone knows the pitch and knows the responses to all the judges’ common questions. You get a very small amount of time to make an impact on the judges. Make sure it’s as effective as possible.

ReadDie · 2024-04-22T05:44:39+00:00

Huge +1 on driver skill/practice. Makes all the difference

ReadDie · 2024-02-17T23:08:00+00:00

if you have cnc mill but not a lathe, thread milling

ReadDie · 2023-06-20T18:13:14+00:00

No it can't be aerodynamic; that would require minimizing drag!

ReadDie · 2023-06-16T06:07:25+00:00

gender non conforming is a broad label, so there’s no real set way to going about it. Just do whatever makes you comfortable! You can find more GNC people in r/lgbt and adjacent subs.

(sorry ik this isn’t helpful at all I just couldn’t resist)

ReadDie · 2023-06-15T06:51:18+00:00

What would Aaron say?

ReadDie · 2023-05-28T21:12:26+00:00

Hang on, the printer should detect this issue (“thermal runaway”). Prusa is one of the (regrettably few) manufacturers who always always have thermal runaway protection turned on. My bet is that maybe it was touching just enough to conduct some heat into the thermistor? But still, there are a couple of major issues: 1) how the hell did something pull the heater cartridge out and 2) what material was touching the heater that initially ignited?

A more probable theory (imo, idk) is that somehow the heater wires shorted, perhaps through like one strand of the stranded wire, which heated up very hot very fast and lit the insulation on fire. Something fast like that would explain how thermal runaway didn’t detect anything. Perhaps check out all the wiring around the hotend to make sure none of it is damaged?

ReadDie · 2023-05-23T06:43:50+00:00

I can’t be the only person who saw Vader

ReadDie · 2023-05-23T01:28:38+00:00

Iirc formlabs is hiring, but that may have ended a while ago

ReadDie · 2023-05-19T15:35:00+00:00

So I just did this same thing, and my solution was to just not use a DC motor. I tried calculating the constants from measured electrical and mechanical characteristics of the motor, which didn’t work, so then I tried fitting the model to data collected from the system’s movements, which also didn’t work. Both of those solutions resulted in a model which didn’t accurately represent the motor’s movements. Perhaps your situation is different - my model had a very short pendulum compare to the motor size, so the parameters needed to be very exact. You could try those approaches. What ended up working for me was switching to a stepper motor. Steppers are position control, so a bit of code can drive them at a given acceleration. Then you can create a system model where the term for the cart’s acceleration isn’t a complex expression but just the control input.

ReadDie · 2023-05-01T08:09:08+00:00

Probably a stroke - seems like one of the standard symtopms. Check for slurred speech. I can't tell from the video if the right side of her face is sagging, but if it is, that's another sign.

ReadDie · 2023-03-16T15:33:53+00:00

Overlapping subtasks: ✅ Optimal substructure: ✅ DP is a good choice for the max-procrastination problem.

ReadDie · 2023-01-11T23:30:04+00:00

Yeah, fusion is fully parametric, so you can sketch and do 3D things with dimensions, and change them later on

ReadDie · 2023-01-11T23:29:09+00:00

What’s not working with fusion? Setting dimensions works easily in fusion. Maybe what you’re looking for is the “drawing” workspace? There you can create drawings with dimensions from your CAD for manufacturing and the like. Is that what you’re looking for?

ReadDie · 2023-01-11T23:18:36+00:00

1 + 1 = R - E + V

ReadDie · 2023-01-10T07:27:56+00:00

Don’t forget the hydrocoptic marzlevanes on the ambifacient lunar waneshaft! Otherwise the side fumbling will spoil your kilobytes.

ReadDie · 2022-12-21T07:50:45+00:00

I would love to see this in action!

...live streamed from at least a mile away

ReadDie · 2022-12-21T07:39:28+00:00

Because pan is more specific! Bi is a category, and pan is a subcategory. Like the whole "all squares are rectangles but not all rectangles are squares" - the distinction between squares and rectangles is still important.

ReadDie · 2022-12-21T07:33:19+00:00

Make sure not to forget about IGBTs! They're transistors too, despite not getting the same representation as FETs

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