Robot Software and Firmware Management

• Understand the ROS/ROS2 software stack at a conceptual level — nodes, topics, services, actions, launch files — well enough to read logs, interpret errors, and communicate issues to robotics engineers Understand
• Apply OTA update rollout procedures: testing on staging robots, batch deployment (5 units first, monitor 48 hours, then remaining fleet), customer notification, post-update monitoring for regressions, and rollback procedures when updates cause failures Apply
• Create a rollback plan for a failed firmware update that restores previous functionality across affected robots while engineering develops a fix Create
• Analyze update changelogs to assess risk — identifying changes that affect navigation, safety, or customer-facing behavior that require extra testing vs. low-risk improvements Analyze
• Apply SLAM map management procedures — updating maps after facility changes, propagating updated maps to specific robots or entire fleets, verifying map accuracy post-update Apply
• Create behavior configurations for different deployment contexts — a restaurant robot (welcoming tone, slow speed in dining area) vs. a hospital robot (calm, clear speech) vs. a warehouse robot (efficiency-optimized, minimal interaction) Create
• Evaluate robot software version consistency across a fleet, identifying robots running outdated firmware and assessing the risk of version drift Evaluate
• Apply configuration management practices to ensure custom settings at each customer site are documented and reproducible if a robot needs replacement Apply

Levels: Remember · Understand · Apply · Analyze · Evaluate · Create — highest demands most original thinking.