Literature review is an essential part of any proper research (and not only) project: it basically answers the simple question of “what is the history of the subject of my project, and what is the current state-of-the-art?”. It aims at helping you understand what are the pitfalls you should avoid, and what are the opportunities for improvement. Through literature review you are researching what others have done in the domain you are working so that you can get inspired about how to work for your own projects. It also helps you build the appropriate language and terminology, so that you can search things more efficiently. So, what are the steps you need to take to conduct and document your literature review?

Update: added some nice pictures from the lab and the robots

There is a small paradox at our department: we are teaching robotics to students, but we used to not have any robots around for them to play with. We actually did have one, that is very very dangerous to use close to people, so I slowly slowly phased it out of use.

But I had to find an alternative: a small, versatile, cheap, robot arm, that we could buy multiples of it and have one for each table of the laboratory. That was how the dream started, and finally, today, this dream came true! Today I finished assemblying and installing the 10th AL5D robot arm in our laboratory!

For quite some time now, I wanted to create a robot model to use it in the classroom. I started imagining it as a 3D printed model, then thought of making it out of styrofoam, converted the idea to carton, but was always stopped by the lack of materials around. Also, the fact that we’ve been teaching online for the past year and a half was not helping.

Last week, I thought of wood. And the moment I thought about it I was wondering how come I didn’t think about this all this time! It is the obvious solution, as there is always wood scraps readily available that I am saving from other projects, plus I have the tools to work with it. So, I spent ~2 years thinking about this, and eventually it took me around 20’ to make it! Here is the result.