Field Stack Robotics#

Field Stack Robotics is a build log and tutorial set for taking a small differential-drive robot from the bench to reliable autonomy in the field. Every page comes from real hardware: the code, the measurements, and what broke along the way. The goal is simple: make an autonomous robot work reliably in the real world, outside the simulator, and write down every step so you can do the same.

Simulated demo. Real IMU recordings are coming.

What is this robot?#

A two-wheel kit robot with an ESP32 running the motor control loop, encoders, a current sensor, a BNO055 IMU, a 2D LiDAR and a Raspberry Pi running ROS 2.

The robotsSee the roadmap → 01Indoor RobotBuilding now 02Outdoor RoverNext 03Tracked RobotLater 04Surface VesselSide branch

Note

Pages marked “coming soon” are on the roadmap but not written yet. Subscribe below to get them when they’re out.

Where do I start?#

New here? Read the roadmap and the hardware overview.
Working on motor control? Start with Reading encoders, then PID speed control.
Getting a robot to navigate on its own? See Navigation.

More information#

Motors and teleop

Encoders, PID + feedforward, stall and slip detection

Motors

ROS 2

micro-ROS, timestamps, TF and rosbags

ROS 2

Odometry and fusion

Wheel, IMU and LiDAR odometry, and my own EKF

Odometry

Localization experiments

UWB, Wi-Fi, BLE, RFID and AprilTag, measured

Localization

SLAM

2D LiDAR, visual SLAM and mapping very large spaces

SLAM

Navigation

Nav2, indoor and outdoor with GPS + RTK, and field failures

Navigation

Latest posts#

Date	Post	Section
Oct 2026	Stall and slip detection	Motors and teleop
Oct 2026	PID speed control	Motors and teleop
Oct 2026	Reading encoders	Motors and teleop

Resources#

Resource	Description
GitHub	Source code, firmware and test data for every post
YouTube	Short videos of each experiment
Nav2 documentation	The navigation stack this project builds on
ROS 2 documentation	Concepts, tutorials and API reference