June 2025: Rock, Paper Scissors Edition

Posted on by burf2000

Hello and welcome to another Burf Update, the focus on robotics has continued throughout the last month which is always a good sign!

MTC: Robotics and Automation Event
So we are exhibiting at the Robotics and Automation event at the MTC again which is a fantastic event based in Coventry. This year we are focusing on Bespoke AI and using a couple of my robots to demo it. We are taking a Sanbot Elf robot to wander around and interact with people (face detection etc). This is running a similar app to the one we wrote for the Film and Movie event last month, but with a focus on AI.

I have also been busy getting the 2nd Inmoov humanoid robot ready for the show. This is running a Rock Paper Scissor AI demo which is all offline. The robot detects faces, asks to play you at the game, then detects your hand, works out what hand you have played via a LLM and then returns a witty message via another LLM. I should find out tomorrow how well it works however in testing it has been pretty good.

Gwiz and predictive driving
The Gwiz passed it’s MOT, yup I am totally shocked. So now I am working on getting it properly kitted out. I have 1 dead battery that I am trying to replace and once that has been done I will be wiring it up with all sorts of sensors. I am pretty excited about this!

ROS2 and the Rover Robot
Very little progress this month on ROS2 learning, due to all of the other robotics stuff going on.

AI
As mentioned last month, this is continuing to have a bigger and bigger impact in the things I do on a daily basis. After the show, I hope to sit down and brainstorm the next few months goals and how to achieve them.

Conclusion
Due to work, I am getting more and more time to do robotics which is great, however I still need to define what my goal is. Am I mainly doing this for fun, or do I want to build something that turns in to a product? When I first created Burf.com search engine, the Internet was a simpler place. Now, everything is moving at such a rate, by the time I have an idea, it already exists. I like the idea of renting robots out, or building custom robotics things for events but is there a need for that?

May 2025: The Sanbot Edition

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Hello and welcome to another Burf Update! This update is all about the Sanbot Elf Robot, of which I managed to acquire 17 🙂


Not the most normal thing to do—especially on the same day your partner moves in—but I’m not exactly known for doing normal things. A few of them needed work, but I’ve got about 10 of them up and running and have written my first demo app for work.


I think this is a great intro to commercial robotics. My current thoughts are to rent out the robots for events, etc., with custom software designed to engage the public and tell them about products and services—a RaaS (Robot as a Service) model.

Drummer Robot
While picking up the Sanbot robots, I also picked up this epic custom drummer robot. It needs work, and I’ll probably break it for parts, but it’s an interesting thing to study.

Inmoov2
I’ve made a little progress here, though my time has mostly been taken up by the Sanbots. I’ve started building the power management area and have added a screen to the front of the robot. I hope to have it fully running on batteries by the end of May.

ROS2 and the Rover Robot
Very little progress this month on ROS2 learning, due to all the Sanbot development.

Gwiz and predictive driving
After the mess with Autoglass—who, to be fair, did compensate me very well—I managed to fit my own windscreen. Pretty messy business, but at least it’s fixed. Now I need to prepare it for the MOT. If it fails, I guess that’s the end of that.

AI
It still amazes me how powerful Large Language Models (LLMs) are. They help me daily, and I can only see myself using them more. The Sanbot app above connects to OpenAI and uses Azure Search AI to tell clients about our products.

Engagement
It’s definitely exciting times—I proposed to my partner Ruth a few weeks back at the top of The Shard, and she said yes!

Conclusion
I think I’m making good progress with the Sanbots, and I’m hopeful to get the InMoov2 Robot moving very soon. The Sanbots give me valuable insight into how a commercial company approaches robotics—from engineering and electronics to the SDK. This has been both insightful and helpful for my journey moving forward.

The only downside is that it has pulled me away from working on ROS2 for a bit, but I’m hoping to get back to that shortly. I’m still focused on my goal in robotics—the target just keeps evolving.

April 2025: Where did March go?

Posted on by burf2000

Hello and welcome to another Burf update. In this update, I try to think about what happened in March! I am sure I did something.

Burf.co Blog
I have updated some of the robotics pages attached to the blog. Nothing massive, but it helps to focus on robotics, etc.

MyRobotLab + The Inmoov + LLM = InMoov Remote
So, this little side project turned out to be useful for making a demo video for a client. It was just prototyping, but still useful. I used hand signals to turn on and off the robot’s microphone, then forward all verbal commands to a custom LLM, allowing full control of the response back. The large language model had been trained on their brochure for context. I did add my own LLM bridge, as mentioned last month.

ROS2 and the Rover Robot
I have continued to learn ROS2, there is still so much to learn. I am nearly halfway through another course.

Inmoov2 on wheels

So still a work in progress (hugely), but I have built a platform attached to an old electric wheelchair and mounted my second Inmoov robot to it. It’s a bit of a beast, but you have to start somewhere. The idea is to use a Raspberry Pi 5 to control the robot, any big compute load will be sent to another computer to process (e.g, voice and LLM). I want a truly mobile robot to take and show people.

Inmoov1
So my main Inmoov robot got fired up last week. I had fitted a new arm to it and hadn’t had time to test it. This was for another demo for someone who found me on LinkedIn. I do find it an exciting time.

Gwiz and predictive driving
Autoglass has proper messed me around, and after 6 weeks, the Gwiz is still not fixed. The batteries are now degrading, and it’s not looking good, sadly. Not sure right now what to do.

AI
Still doing exciting things with AI, if only I could remember all the cool things it teaches me. I did a cool demo using ChatGPT, taking an image and working out where a robotic arm should move to. That was pretty cool.

Brilliant
I am still using this app heavily, I am now taking notes on things I learn as it’s gotten a lot harder! I think my streak is 127 days!

Birthday
So I am now 1 year older and as always, I got some new kit. I got a ROS2 book to read, an IMU sensor to play with, and a super cool ESP32-S3 development board (comes with all sorts)

Conclusion
Again, not sure there is one, but I feel I am focusing on robotics, which is the aim. My weight, sadly, has gone through the roof and needs to be reigned in!

February 2025: Igniting the fire!

Posted on by burf2000

Hello and welcome to another Burf Update, in this update we have an exciting title! So what I have I been doing?

Burf.co Blog
So I have spent some time updating the content of the blog in hopes that it will focus me on the future which for me is robotics. I hope to re-ignite my Facebook page and spread my news a little further (when there is something useful to say). I have added an AI page and broken down my robotics projects into technology (LEGO, VEX, Inmoov, and ROS).

It does help me realise that I have still achieved some cool things, not as much as I hoped but progress is continuing. I still have some content to add, so this is a WIP.

MyRobotLab + The Inmoov + LLM = InMoov Remote
So one of my goals was to understand MyRobotLab more and be able to write my own external Python scripts to control the Inmoov Humanoid Robot and the LLM (Ollama) that it uses. It’s still a work in progress but I have made a working demo which can be found here:

Features so far:

  • Consume webcam feed and apply YOLO11 and/or Hand/Face detection
  • Stop and start the robot listening
  • Can get the robot to speak, or respond to a text input (e.g answer a question)
  • Lists all responses back from MRL
  • Can ask the LLM for a response
  • Maps all of the services to JSON so that you can get things like a list of gestures.

Next, I want to put my own LLM layer in so that I can bypass MyRobotLab chatbot. This will allow me to add a database connection so I can record responses to review plus add a memory of sorts.

ROS2 and the Rover Robot
Good news on that front also, I have continued my ROS2 course and I have fixed the major issues with the Rover Robot when trying to get it to use NAV2 and SLAM. It was all to do with the CostMap and inflation_radius. Basically, the obstacles it detected, it inflated their area too much so that it could not plot a route around them.

The aim is to complete the ROS2 course (another course) I am doing on Udemy, refine the Rover Robot so it works a lot better using SLAM and NAV2, and then build a much better version that’s at least half-human-size.

Gwiz and predictive driving
Progress with the Gwiz has sadly stalled at the moment. First, it was the cold weather killing the batteries and now someone has smashed the windowscreen. Autoglass has tried to replace it however it has turned into a bit of a custom job as there are not many Gwizs left on the road.

AI
All of the above heavily realises on AI in some form or another. I now use ChatGTP and other LLMs on a daily basis to help me achieve tasks, at work, I am now training models across data sets to detect trends, anomalies, and insights. It is quite extraordinary how fast it has entered a large part of my life. There is no goal attached to this heading, just a reflection.

Conclusion
Not sure if conclusion is the right word, but focusing on the 3 areas above is at least a good start for me on becoming more focused. Each one could take me into an exciting area, it’s just coming up with the use case and sharing the knowledge.

January 2025: Happy New Year Edition

Posted on by burf2000

Hello and welcome to another Burf Update, I hope you all had a lovely time over the festival season.

New Year, new goals.
So I am trying to break the mold of always doing the same things every year however it has worked pretty well. I set some high-level goals, slowly refine them through the year, and usually hit them. However, I guess my criticism of myself is there are generally too many (just look at how many random projects I had last year) and I hit each of them in a shallow way instead of an in-depth way.

Last year, I deepened my knowledge of MyRobotLab, focused more on working with the Inmoov Robot than ever before, and began learning ROS2.

At the moment I do have 3 high-level projects that are very similar to last year however I want to take it to a greater depth.

They are:

  • MyRobotLab + The Inmoov + LLM
  • ROS2 and the Rover Robot
  • Gwiz and predictive driving

MyRobotLab
So last year I did set myself some targets around learning this, and within a month I had smashed them however I really still don’t know how it works that well. My suggestion for this year is to properly learn how the services work, how to subscribe and publish, how to integrate an LLM (Llama) and get the 2nd Inmoov robot to have conversations with people. Maybe the output of this would be to document it all.

ROS2
So last year I followed a ROS2 tutorial and built a rover robot, that uses Slam and Nav2. However, it doesn’t really work too well and I do not really understand a lot of it. ROS2 is huge and quite complex, so properly investing time in this could be a good thing. I would then like to extend it to control a robotic arm (Elephant Cobot arm).

Gwiz
Now that I own my 3rd Gwiz, I think I need to accept I need one in my life! I would like to do something useful with it, maybe look back at the self-driving course I did and see if I can get it to predict driving movements. I think the sensor fusion would be interesting and I think this would later feed onto ROS2 again.

Current state of play
I am still pondering what to do with the above projects. I have already got the 2nd Inmoov robot up and running (Since starting to write this post) and working with LLava and Llama3.2. The kids find it very exciting now it can talk a lot. I plan to continue with this for a week or so more so that its refined. I have worked closely with the community on getting this working as there have been some bugs found.

Burf.co
I really do need to work out what to do with this. Maybe it can feed in to the Inmoov Robot

Inmoov Robot
The main Inmoov Robot now has a new hand and arm, it needs testing but should be completely operational. I need to review the torso to see if that still works

Brilliant Math App
Still loving this app and have neem using it for 45+ days in a row

The goal for the next blog post is to make some decisions and refine the goals.

December 2024: Christmas Edition

Posted on by burf2000

Hello and welcome to another Burf Update, I hope everyone is enjoying the festive season. I have always been a big kid and especially love Christmas. It’s also a time to reflect and set new goals for next year.

Burf.co
As of the 10th of December, Burf.co has had 3,645,694 searches. The current breakdown shows that I need to focus on file searches. I think Burf.co will change next year to something more useful.


Inmoov Robot
Not a lot has happened in the last month; however, work has started on repairing the main InMoov robot, and parts have been ordered for the second one. I am trying to get back into it.

Camper Van
Camping with the new partner was awesome, and we plan to do a lot more next year. There is not a lot to say on the technical front.

Electric Motorbike
Parked

Rover Robot / ROS2
So I have completed the online ROS2 course to make a rover that uses SLAM Toolbox, Nav2, etc. I need to finish building the actual robot but that’s only a few hours of work. This has been my main focus over the last few weeks. ROS2 isn’t easy to learn but I am slowly getting there. I plan to do a self-driving and a robotic arm ROS2 project

Gwiz
Yup, I have a new Gwiz! I have never owned the same car more than once let alone 3 times. I got a brilliant deal and hope to do some very cool stuff with it. This all kinda links in with ROS2 / Burf.co future plans

Electric Wheelchair
So I wrote some better software for this ready to be used as a robotics platform.

ChatGPT / AI
I have started using ChatGPT a bit through work. This has led me to learn Azure AI services and all sorts, which is really interesting. As said this is mainly for work however it gets me thinking about how I may use it for my robotics projects.

Governor
There is so much I want to do in life that I took the hard decision of resigning as a Governor. I did manage for nearly 2 years which isn’t too bad however things were ramping up and I didn’t have the bandwidth sadly.

Brilliant Math App
I finally bought a membership to this app and have been doing a bit of maths every day for a couple of weeks. I am still really enjoying it. I hope this will help me with my robotics.

Goals for the end of the year
With only a few weeks of the year left, how am I doing against my goals?

  • Stay around 80-82KG (DONE, currently 81)
  • Camp at least 1 more time this year in the VW (DONE in October and planned one in December)
  • Finish the YouTube robotics series of videos (DONE, finished this week)
  • Get the remote wheelchair working (DONE)
  • Stay on top of being a governor (Decided to resign)
  • Re-start the maths learning (DONE)

Based on the above, I would say I am doing really well. I feel like I am in a good headspace, I am actively learning and focusing on Robotics. Work and home life are good, all I need to do now is keep it that way.

I will try and do another post before the end of the year listing all the things I have achieved this year and then start figuring out plans for next year.

October 2024: The Amaze Balls Edition

Posted on by burf2000

Hello and welcome to another Burf Update, I hope everyone is having an amazing time, if you’re not, and I can help, do ping me!

Amaze Balls
So oddly enough I have met a new partner and it has been completely magical! Yup, I used the word magical! I am honestly blown away by how well we get on and am super hopeful for the future!

Burf.co
As of the 16th of October, Burf.co has had 2,358,929 searches. I need to properly analyse it and see what I can do to make this a useful service.

Inmoov Robot
Not much has happened on this over the last month however I am in a much better head space and am already planning what to do!

Camper Van
This is all set up to go camping next week with my new partner. I would like to use it more and make some improvements however, we are now coming into winter so will be used less.

Electric Motorbike
Parked for the moment as I now have a new motorbike (ER5) which I have been using while the Harley engine rebuild happens (2 months and counting). I did test the new bracket etc but I need to do more work.

Tinkercad
One thing I forgot to mention is that I have done a lot of work in Tinkercad recently and enjoyed it. I have even started helping out friends by re-designing and printing broken pieces for them. I see this as a bit of a game-changer

Rover Robot / ROS2
I have restarted this and making some progress, this should be my main focus for the end of the year.

A5 Laser Engraver
Still using it with LightBurn which I like

Goals for the end of the year
I need to keep focus on my goals for the end of the year, as it isn’t that far away now. Due to life changes, I have refined the list a little.

  • Stay around 80-82KG (Life)
  • Camp at least 1 more time this year in the VW (Life)
  • Finish the YouTube robotics series of videos (Robotics / Education)
  • Get the remote wheelchair working (Robotics)
  • Stay on top of being a governor (Life)
  • Re-start the maths learning (Education)

I have canceled the mental health course as it was not a good fit for me. I have paused the robotics video for my MBA due to life changes however I do still plan to do it. I am trying to take a much more positive life focus 🙂

September 2024: The Reboot Edition

Posted on by burf2000

Hello and welcome to another Burf Update, I feel this is the re-start of some fun times ahead :). With most people, August was mainly written off due to family holidays (and canceled ones), etc however, now that is over, it’s time to get my head down and focus!

The Elephant has left the room
If you read my last blog post, I wasn’t in the best place however, I honestly feel like I am turning a corner and feel pretty positive about the future 🙂

Burf.co
Since I put Burf.co back to its old state (11th July), it has had 1,186,315 searches which is quite bonkers! Now a lot of this will be bots etc, but it’s still quite an interesting result.

Inmoov Robot
So, I have not done much in fixing my Inmoov robot, but I randomly found another in Wales and have started fixing that, this one will mounted to a mobile platform :). I feel super lucky to find one. I have also dug out the electric wheelchair to pair with the new robot, or at least get the platform working. If you look at the picture you can see the fresh white printed parts which are the bits I have fixed so far.

Camper Van
The camper van had a charging issue which I have managed to fix. The main goal here is to use it regularly :). I also fitted a split charger to the van, I feel like this has some good possibilities.

Sinclair C5
My Sinclair C5 had a meltdown at the same time the Harley blew up (expensive) however, I have also managed to re-wire that and it now works and should be a lot more reliable 🙂

Electric Motorbike
Randomly, I dug out the electric motorbike this weekend, did some welding, and printed a new 3D mount for it. I hope to test it this week

Maths / Brilliant App
I am planning to come back to this soon. I have just started doing a Math diploma I bought last year. I am hoping to get more focus.

Rover Robot / ROS2
I have failed on this because of the personal life issues that have had gone on with the ex (a long story), and the sadly canceled holiday to Vegas (dream holiday) however there have been some silver linings that have put me in a good headspace. I am thankful for this and hopeful for the future.

A5 Laser Engraver
When I went to get the Inmoov Robot from Wales, the epic guy also sold me an A5 ATOMSTACK Laser engraver with software that has been super easy to use. I have managed to cut shapes from this in wood.

Let’s revisit the goals

Life Goals
I originally wanted to get to 85-90KG and I am at 80KG and in good shape. I am proud of my progress here. I would say my health goals are pretty much achieved. I would like to continue running which was going well and doing the gym with Alfie. At some point, I am going to focus on doing a muscle-up. I also carried on being a school governor (barely) and I now have a camper van which relaxes the truck. The loft has lights and I have a large shed.

Education Goals
I finished my MBA and still try to keep on track of new content and the Slack channel. I still try and join a few sessions a month and have been asked to do a session on robotics. I would like to make sure I do this video. I did complete the self-driving course and I have done more Maths this year than most. I would like to do some more Maths this year, however again a pretty good result.

Projects
So the main one was to fix the Inmoov robot which I did do, I also learned the software (MRL) and feel quite happy with the progress I have made. I would like to be more active on the Discord channel and Facebook ground but again, I have achieved a lot. I had parked the electric motorbike project when I hit a big issue however, I am going to give the a quick punt again. I haven’t done a lot with Burf.co however I am not that worried. I did get the mobility scooter and electric wheelchair working via remote control.

Goals for the end of the year
I feel like I have done pretty well so far, I have gained a few more skills (welding, 3D modeling, etc) however I would like to bullet point some top-level items.

  • Stay around 80-82KG (Life)
  • Camp at least 2 more times this year in the VW (Life)
  • Finish the YouTube robotics series of videos (Robotics / Education)
  • Stay on top of being a governor (Life)
  • Do robotic video for MBA course (Robotics)
  • Complete my course on mental health (Education)
  • Re-start the maths learning (Education)

I think that’s pretty easy to achieve, I could keep adding but I feel that does not help me focus on what I want to do.

July 2024: The Briefer Edition.

Posted on by burf2000

Hello and welcome to another Burf update, it appears to be nearly 3 months since I have last done an update. That can’t be a good thing.

The Elephant in the room

In the last blog post, I had just split up with my partner, which has changed my focus on life. It’s an odd feeling being on my own at this stage of life. I have my family and friends around me, but it takes time to process. To be fair, I have had some amazing times at festivals and have had some epic adventures 🙂

Burf.co

The old site is back, the blog has moved back to where it was, I have a plan 🙂

Inmoov Robot

So we did another show in May, in partnership with BOW (robotics software), and again was a great success. Since then I haven’t done a lot of robotics due to adjusting to being single. One of the arms needs to be replaced due to failing and I hope to do this over the next month or so.

Vehicles

So I no longer have the GWIZ as it needed welding to get it past its MOT, however, I now own a 1981 VW Campervan (called Hulk, yes it’s green) to take the kids away in and I also have a Sinclair C5 which has broken already (will be upgrading).

Brilliant App

I enjoyed using the Brilliant app, however, I have paused it for the moment, I will get back on to this.

Rover Robot / ROS2

So for July, I plan to get back to building my own designed robot. I feel like I am slowly returning to a good headspace.

Goals

As you can see from above, I haven’t done a lot of technical things however I have:
1) Got my weight down to 83kg from 96.4kg (lost 14% of myself)
2) Ran a half marathon in 2 hours, just went out to clear my head, and ran 13.1 miles
3) Got my 5km down to 23-24 from 28:40
4) Raised £280 for Teenage Cancer Trust doing over 3000 press-ups in June
5) No longer have high cholesterol
6) Can do 10 wide grip pullups
7) Moved the guinea pigs outside so people will now visit (lol)

I think there were some other achievements, but the summary is that I have chucked all of my energy into getting fit and making epic memories 🙂

April 2024: The Brief Edition.

Posted on by burf2000

Hello and welcome to another Burf update, I haven’t actually thought of a title for this as until I stop and think, I am not really sure what I have done in April.

The Elephant in the room

So the last time I wrote a post, I was super excited about a show (which went super well), I had done tons of work on the Inmoov robot, and Compsoft had received some Apple Vision Pro’s. Exciting times!!!

Sadly a few personnel things were also going on, and still are. I have sadly split up with my partner which has made the last month a real struggle. I know, everyone has been there, life is about ups and downs, and at the time I thought I was doing the right thing for myself, however, I am not quite sure now. Life has been pretty tough recently, however, I am lucky that I have amazing friends and family looking out for me.

Robotic and Automation Show

We smashed it, we could not have asked for a better show. Our stand was super popular and everyone loved our tech. We were told many times we had the most engaging stand. We got to chat with some outstanding people and make some new contacts. We are not set to do another show in May 🙂

Inmoov Robot

Since the show, I haven’t done a great deal on the robot. I have replaced its neck as it was not working very well. I have printed a new arm/hand but have not had time to build it and I have sped it up for the Apple Vision Pro demo. Oh and fixed the other arm. Once I get my mojo back I hope to continue improving it.

Rover Robot / ROS2

I have started designing and building my own robot, and I have only made the briefest progress however this is something I want to achieve this year, ideally before July. I am following some rough guides on it so that I have some sort of direction. It is very similar to:
https://articulatedrobotics.xyz/tutorials/mobile-robot/project-overview/

It will run ROS2, SLAM and will have Lidar and a vision system. I hope to drive it outside remotely. This will help me learn more about robotics and ROS2.

ROS2 mentorship

As I mentioned last month I got invited into a ROS2/Robotics mentorship program however I have just not been in the right place mentally to keep up with it. Sad really but I have to be honest with myself. The classes happen at very odd times so it’s quite easy to miss them.

Brilliant App

A long-running theme of mine is to improve my Maths as I need it for Robotics, I have tried a few things out there however the one that seems to keep my brain moving (so far) is the Brilliant App, it’s really good but a little expensive. I am sure I will cave and buy it as it seems to keep me engaged.

Shed

Due to my partner and I splitting up, I had to get stuff out of her garage. This was a lot of LEGO, which is now in my new 6×9 Shed. Thanks to my dad for buying it for me for my birthday 🙂

Unity

At work, I have been looking into Unity, Spatial computing with the Apple Vision Pro, and digital twins. The plan is to try and use Unity to move a 3D model of the blue robotic arm in Mixed reality while it mimics it in real life. I have made some progress but I haven’t used Unity for years. Unity seems to have made the decision to create a new framework for the Apple Vision Pro (PolySpatial), instead of adding the device to the Mixed Reality template which supports Quest, Hololens, and Magic Leap. You also need a pro license to use it (£1800py).

Goals

I know I have a list of goals defined and I am on track to smash them however my focus at the moment is to get my brain firing up, and get the MOJO back to how I used to be at the peak of the O2 Labs / LEGO times. Those were fun times and I really was doing some epic things.