Most of building a robot is debugging it.

Botopsy Lab drops you into a broken ROS 2 system, gives you the real tools, and makes you find the fault. Then tests check your fix.

How a lab actually goes

Every case runs the same way I ran it on a real robot: see the symptom, gather evidence, change one thing, prove it.

01

You get a symptom, not a checklist

The robot does something wrong. Obstacle shows up on the wrong side, a topic goes quiet, the map never loads. That is all you start with.

02

You look before you touch

Real ROS tools. tf2_echo, ros2 topic echo, the node graph, the logs. You find the actual fault instead of guessing and restarting things.

03

You change the smallest thing

One line in a URDF, one QoS setting, one namespace. The fix is usually tiny. Finding it is the hard part, and that is the point.

04

Tests decide, not you

Automated checks run against the repaired system. They pass or they do not. No completion buttons, no vibes.

The main track

ROS 2 Systems Debugging

Learn ROS 2 by diagnosing and repairing robot systems that fail the way real ones do.

  • ROS graph diagnosis
  • QoS reasoning
  • TF timing
  • Launch configuration
  • Executor analysis
  • Incident reconstruction
Modules
8
Repair incidents
16
Transfer challenges
8
Capstone
1
Level
Beginner to intermediate
Runs on
ROS 2 Jazzy

It runs in the browser. You do not install ROS.

The whole thing is a real workspace: editor, terminal, and a Gazebo sim of the broken robot. Guided cases open with one file and one check so you are not lost. Once you are past those, you get the full workspace.

warehouse AMR
obstacle alignment restored
passed
  • Visible tests8 / 8
  • Hidden regression tests3 / 3
  • Fault foundTF rotation

ROS 2 Jazzy / Ubuntu 24.04 / reproducible image

One person built this from a year of broken robots.

These labs are the notes I kept while building an AMR, turned into cases you can break and fix yourself. The first one is free. The beta is open if you want in early.