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Welcome

· 2 min read
Alexandra Barry
Alexandra Barry
Masters Student in Robotics

🚀 Welcome to the official documentation hub for the RAIL Lab Robots!

We're excited to launch this site as a one-stop resource for everything happening across our robotic platforms and research projects. Whether you're a fellow researcher or curious collaborator, this site is designed to give you easy access to knowledge, tools, and updates from across the lab.

🤖 What You'll Find Here​

This documentation site is structured around our core robotic platforms and projects. Here’s what you can explore:

  • 📂 Robot Setup Guides: Step-by-step instructions for getting started with platforms like the A1 Quadruped, TurtleBot2, Husky UGV, BlueROV2, and more.
  • 🧠 Project Overviews: Descriptions of our ongoing research — from autonomous navigation to multi-agent coordination and reinforcement learning.
  • ⚙️ Code & API References: Links to GitHub repositories, ROS packages, and software stacks that power our robots.
  • 📚 Tutorials & How-Tos: Bite-sized guides for using sensors, debugging hardware, deploying models, and more.
  • 📝 Internal Notes & FAQs: Common gotchas, lab-specific hardware quirks, and practical advice from those who’ve been in the trenches.

💡 Why This Site Exists​

We believe documentation should be:

  • 🪄 Clear and beginner-friendly, without sacrificing depth.
  • 🤝 Collaborative, so anyone in the lab can contribute and improve it.
  • 🔄 Versioned, so each project and robot can evolve safely and transparently.
  • 🌍 Open (when appropriate), to foster learning and collaboration with the broader robotics and research community.

📬 Get Involved​

If you're part of the lab, you're already a potential contributor. See something that’s missing, outdated, or confusing? Submit a pull request or send a message in our Discord channel. This site will grow with your insights and experience.

For external collaborators or those interested in our work — we’d love to hear from you. Reach out via GitHub or contact me on the Discord channel and let’s build something incredible together.

🛠 Built With Love (and Docusaurus)​

This site is powered by Docusaurus, an open-source documentation framework. We've tailored it to suit our lab's needs, but it's always evolving — just like our robots.

Thank you for visiting. Let’s build, break, debug, and document — together.

The RAIL Lab Robotics Team