InOrbit is on a mission to maximize the potential of every robot. To do that, we educate and advocate for the adoption of effective robot operations (RobOps) and work to fulfill our promise of bringing DevOps best practices to robotics. Today we’re continuing that work, with the launch of new support for Configuration as Code.

This is a vital DevOps practice that has allowed massive data centers and cloud applications to scale. The configuration of every computing resource can be handled through code, such as scripts and API calls, enabling greater control and more advanced logic. This can then be managed through version control systems such as git, support rollbacks and more granular configuration based on different variables.  

This past year saw major changes for InOrbit, and we couldn’t be happier with the results. Through experiment-led development, lots of trial and error, and some great connections with our friends and family in the robotics community (that’s all of you), we’ve made our platform more accessible, and robust for our users.

As 2021 comes to a close we are taking time to look back and reflect, if only for a few minutes on the year that was, and highlight some of our successes.

The value of early feedback in any product development – including software – is, well, invaluable.

Software development has evolved over the last 20 years to allow for more incremental or iterative development, to help eliminate the problems of delivering a product that a customer doesn’t want. We all know software engineers who have suffered from spending monumental time and effort on creating something that ends up being the wrong product, tool or app.

In the beginning...

I entered the robotics world 10 years ago, thanks to an opportunity from Willow Garage and its outstanding people. I joined them from the world of enterprise software with the goal of helping to bring robotics research into the world with production-ready solutions.

I fell in love with the humanity and professional excellence of the robotics engineers I worked with, and the interesting challenge of creating tools to make our lives easier.