Amsterdam Robotics Club × Monumental

Hey everyone!
Our next event is on the way, and it's one you won't want to miss. This event features Monumental, the Amsterdam-based company building autonomous construction robots that are already laying bricks. This time we'll have two speakers. Engineers from both the software and hardware side, sharing how they're actually building these robots. And to top it off, there'll be a live demo of a robot at work, which we think you'll find pretty fascinating to see up close.
Thursday, September 17th
18:30
Monumental office, Amsterdam
Meet the speakers!

Speaker #1: Philip Joubert
Bio: Chemist who got bored in the lab, so I started teaching high school and running a robotics club instead. Built robotic instruments with students, took a team to first place in two age groups at the WRO World Finals in Delhi in 2015. Been 3D printing since the days of wooden Ultimakers and duct-taped RepRaps. Moved to Amsterdam in 2017, prototyping for an ed-tech NGO, built mechatronics for light artists, and eventually landed at Monumental as employee #3. Still making things, just at a different scale.
Talk: We don't build precision robots, we build robots that work. Robots that run in the mud, get hit with a wrench, and keep going. "Crappy robots powered by incredible software and AI".
Phil will walk through the hardware philosophy behind Monumental's machines: why off-the-shelf truck parts, bits off a Fiat Panda, and scaffolding tubing beat custom aerospace components.

Speaker #2: Ross Gardiner
Bio: Ross has been at Monumental for four years working on all parts of the software stack. Right now his focus is on how we map the construction site and adapt the on-paper architectural designs to fit into the real world.
Talk: I'll look at how we decided to build the software stack behind our bricklaying robots systems, where we make heavy use of Rust, Typescript and Nix. How is it panning out? What did it take to get a working robot? What would we like to improve in future?

Stay tuned! Fol