Hacker News: msadowski

Roboharm: Do frontier robot policies refuse unsafe instructions?

msadowski — Mon, 21 Sep 2026 18:58:26 +0000

Article URL: https://robocurve.org/roboharm/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49791720

Points: 29

# Comments: 14

Visualizing the Artemis II Mission

msadowski — Tue, 21 Jul 2026 07:22:11 +0000

See also Artemis II Photo Timeline - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47954394 - April 2026 (28 comments)

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48989145

Points: 10

# Comments: 0

NASA launches robot to save Swift telescope falling to Earth

msadowski — Mon, 06 Jul 2026 10:13:28 +0000

Article URL: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0ry4xx7rk8o

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48802722

Points: 31

# Comments: 9

Xiaomi-robotics-0 – an open-source Vision-Language-Action model

msadowski — Mon, 16 Feb 2026 08:33:31 +0000

Article URL: https://xiaomi-robotics-0.github.io

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47032445

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

Turning a VLP‑16 into a "Spherical" Scanner – A Cave Mapping Project

msadowski — Fri, 06 Feb 2026 23:20:10 +0000

Article URL: https://foxglove.dev/blog/turning-a-vlp-16-into-a-spherical-scanner

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46919526

Points: 8

# Comments: 1

Robot touch sensing with torque sensors only [video]

msadowski — Wed, 22 Oct 2025 05:25:31 +0000

Article URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgoKUmdIRnU

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45665174

Points: 3

# Comments: 1

New comment by msadowski in "Ask HN: How do robotics teams manage data and debugging today?"

msadowski — Sat, 04 Oct 2025 05:34:18 +0000

One thing that comes to mind is checking the timestamps across sensors and other topics. Two cases come to mind:

* I was setting up Ouster lidar to use gos time, don’t remember the details now but it was reporting the time ~32 seconds in the past (probably some leap seconds setting?)

* I had a ROS node misbehaving in some weird ways - it turned out there was a service call to insert something into db and for some reason the db started taking 5+ minutes to complete which wasn’t really appropriate for a blocking call

I think the timing is one thing that needs to be consistently done right on every platform. The other issues I came across were very application specific.

New comment by msadowski in "Ask HN: How do robotics teams manage data and debugging today?"

msadowski — Fri, 03 Oct 2025 18:52:12 +0000

In my case, it’s definitely the data triage. Once I see the signal, I usually have ideas on what’s happening but I’ve been doing this for 11 years.

Maybe there could be value in signal interpretation for purely software engineers but I reckon it would be hard for such team to build robots.

New comment by msadowski in "Ask HN: How do robotics teams manage data and debugging today?"

msadowski — Fri, 03 Oct 2025 11:39:22 +0000

Full disclosure, I work at Foxglove right now. Before joining, I spent over seven years consulting and had more than 50 clients during that period. Here are some thoughts:

* Combing through the syslogs to find issues is an absolute nightmare, even more so if you are told that the machine broke at some point last night

* Even if you find the error, it's not necessarily when something broke; it could have happened way before, but you just discovered it because the system hit a state that required it

* If combing through syslog is hard, try rummaging through multiple mcap files by hand to see where a fault happened

* The hardware failing silently is a big PITA - this is especially true for things that read analog signals (think PLCs)

Many of the above issues can be solved with the right architecture or tooling, but often the teams I joined didn't have it, and lacked the capacity to develop it.

At Foxglove, we make it easy to aggregate and visualize the data and have some helper features (e.g., events, data loaders) that can speed up workflows. However, I would say that having good architecture, procedures, and an aligned team goes a long way in smoothing out troubleshooting, regardless of the tools.

Build Toolkits

msadowski — Tue, 20 May 2025 08:51:10 +0000

Article URL: https://msadowski.github.io/build-toolkits/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44039309

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by msadowski in "Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (May 2025)"

msadowski — Fri, 02 May 2025 14:46:57 +0000

  Location: Prague, Czech Republic
  Remote: Yes
  Willing to relocate: No
  Technologies: ROS, Python, C++, Robotics, Px4, Ardupilot, Pixhawk 
  Résumé/CV: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mateuszsadowski/
  Email: mat[at]msadowski.ch

I have 11 years of experience making software for robots. For the past 7 years, I've been working as a consultant on various projects. I have experience building software for hardware platforms, from autonomous mobile robots through drones to heavy-metal industrial robots. These days, I have a slight preference for consulting projects but can consider a full-time position if there is a good match.

Remote Robotics Consulting – Seven Years In

msadowski — Wed, 23 Apr 2025 18:04:59 +0000

Article URL: https://msadowski.github.io/7-years-remote-robotics-consulting/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43774899

Points: 4

# Comments: 1

New comment by msadowski in "OpenAI's new reasoning AI models hallucinate more"

msadowski — Sat, 19 Apr 2025 06:22:21 +0000

Anyone has any stories on companies overusing AI? I’ve had some very frustrating encounters already when non-technical people were trying to help by sending AI solution to the issue which totally didn’t make any sense. I liked how the researchers in this work [1] prose calling LLM output “Frankfurtian BS”. I think it’s very fitting.

[1] https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20250001849

New comment by msadowski in "Ask HN: Freelancer? Seeking freelancer? (March 2025)"

msadowski — Mon, 03 Mar 2025 17:39:21 +0000

SEEKING WORK | Remote | Prague, Czech Republic | Robotics Software Developer

I'm a robotics software developer with experience leading teams and integrating software on various platforms (custom industrial robots in smelters, UAVs, rovers, USVs). Have experience on robotics full-stack from low-level interfaces of actuators, sensors etc. to deploying navigation and behaviour trees. Mostly experienced with ROS, but did a fair bit of work working with Px4 autopilot. My super power is putting things together and diagnosing difficult issues.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mateuszsadowski/

Personal Website with some older projects: https://msadowski.github.io/

E-mail available on my HN profile

New comment by msadowski in "Freelancing: How I found clients, part 1"

msadowski — Tue, 25 Feb 2025 19:49:49 +0000

I’ve been consulting for close to 7 years in robotics now, robotics being a niche field I guess it has been a bit easier for me to find clients. I never had a period without a client and never had to do cold outreach.

Here are some things I learned: * You can usually charge way more per project basis instead of charging by the hour but it’s crazy difficult to get it right for R&D projects * Most of my clients came to me through my blog * 2 years ago UpWork was surprisingly good for finding projects, these days there is lots of AI stuff coming from freelancers when they apply and I’m not so sure anymore * Discuss price as early as possible to not waste time

I wrote a series of blog posts on my journey in case anyone is interested (I’m quite sure you will find the above points there): https://msadowski.github.io/5-years-remote-robotics-consulti...

This year I might write another update to share a painful lesson on having all your eggs in one basket and not spending time on working your blog.

New comment by msadowski in "Freelancing: How I found clients, part 1"

msadowski — Tue, 25 Feb 2025 19:39:26 +0000

Same experience here. I also found that if they haggle on the price at the beginning they turn out very difficult to work with.

Tell HN: FOSDEM 2025 is starting in an hour

msadowski — Sat, 01 Feb 2025 07:29:02 +0000

Schedule link: https://fosdem.org/2025/schedule/ - you will find the online stream on the page of each room.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42896554

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by msadowski in "Volkswagen Group brings electric car for EUR 20k"

msadowski — Wed, 29 May 2024 21:07:09 +0000

There was a ~€20k electric car from the VW group. It was called Skoda Citigo iV but they axed it. Seems like they are walking in circles.

New comment by msadowski in "Hertz Charging a Tesla Renter for Gas Was Not an Isolated Incident"

msadowski — Mon, 20 May 2024 05:20:20 +0000

One thing I learned really quickly renting in Europe is to take pictures of the rental before driving off. Last time I rented a car there was a huge scratch on the side that wasn’t included in their pickup form. When I returned the car they were ready to bill me for it until I showed the picture and their response was: “OK, no worries then, all is good”. From the reviews I’ve been reading people often get charged this way and I’m wondering how many people end up paying for the same damage.

Ask HN: Those who took a sabbatical from a side project: how did it work out?

msadowski — Tue, 07 May 2024 21:10:52 +0000

Hi HN!

After close to 6 years I’m taking a break from writing a newsletter (https://www.weeklyrobotics.com/ for the interested). It was an interesting exercise in consistency (I pushed an issue every week since I started).

If you took a break from a personal project, did you return to it? I would love to hear some stories whether good or bad.

Also, if anyone happens to have any advice on anything that can help during a break or making the most out of it - I’ll be grateful for it too!

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40291536

Points: 2

# Comments: 0