Robotics Summit: How Scythe Robotics uses Rust for software development

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Zach Goins for the robotics summit.

For a long time, robotics software development has been forced to make a choice between safe software and fast software. Early on, Scythe Robotics chose a third path: Rust, the new programming language that promised a break from that dichotomy. It was a lonely and bold choice at the time but has paid huge dividends.

Zach Goins, senior autonomy software engineer at Scythe Robotics, a developer of commercial autonomous lawnmowers, will discuss Scythe’s decision to use Rust for software development during his talk at the Robotics Summit & Expo called “Oxidizing Your Software Development: Rust for Robotics.” The talk will take place at the Boston Convention Center on May 11, 2023, at 2:00 PM.

Goins will discuss how Scythe benefited from Rust’s strengths to build a robot software platform that is both reliable and performant, while still enabling high-velocity development. For example, leveraging the best parts of both ROS and Rust is possible with the mature rosrust crate, which allows engineers to make use of existing ROS tools as well as the wider crates.io package ecosystem. Further, directly integrating with other existing C/C++ software is straightforward as well, enabling the reuse of proven libraries and device-specific features like compute accelerators and other C/C++ platform SDKs.

Scythe’s rapid progress is, in no small part, due to the strengths of Rust and the confidence it has unlocked for developers to move fast and build things reliably. This talk will be a guide for others looking to oxidize and accelerate their software development process.

Zach Goins comes from a non-traditional background of the business school at the University of Florida with a side hustle as a musician and he stumbled into engineering through an unexpected encounter with model planes that sparked an insatiable interest in machines and programming.

He found his way to the Machine Intelligence Lab at the university and, rather than restarting college to get an engineering degree, learned everything he could about robotics through direct hands-on experience and experimentation. Goins then began his career as a Software Engineer at a 3D mapping + SLAM startup, where he met two of the future founders of Scythe Robotics. Itching to get back into robotics after leveling up his programming chops in that role, he joined Scythe as the first full-time, non-founder software engineer.

You can find the full agenda for the Robotics Summit here. The Robotics Summit & Expo is the premier event for commercial robotics developers. There will be nearly 70 industry-leading speakers sharing their development expertise on stage during the conference, with 150-plus exhibitors on the show floor showcasing their latest enabling technologies, products and services that help develop commercial robots. There also will be a career fair, networking opportunities and more. Expo-only passes are just $75. Academic discounts are available and academic full conference rates are just $295.