Applies production robotics design principles including fail-safe defaults, rate separation, composability, and graceful degradation.
---
name: robotics-software-principles
description: >
Foundational software design principles applied specifically to robotics module development.
Use this skill when designing robot software modules, structuring codebases, making architecture
decisions, reviewing robotics code, or building reusable robotics libraries. Trigger whenever the
user mentions SOLID principles for robots, modular robotics software, clean architecture for robots,
dependency injection in robotics, interface design for hardware, real-time design constraints, error
handling strategies for robots, configuration management, separation of concerns in perception-planning-
control, composability of robot behaviors, or any discussion of software craftsmanship in a robotics
context. Also trigger for code reviews of robotics code, refactoring robot software, or designing
APIs for robotics libraries.
---
# Robotics Software Design Principles
## Why Robotics Software Is Different
Robotics code operates under constraints that most software never faces:
1. **Physical consequences** — A bug doesn't just crash a process, it crashes a robot into a wall
2. **Real-time deadlines** — Missing a 1ms control loop deadline can cause oscillation or damage
3. **Sensor uncertainty** — All inputs are noisy, delayed, and occasionally wrong
4. **Hardware diversity** — Same algorithm must work on 10 different grippers from 5 vendors
5. **Sim-to-real gap** — Code must run identically in simulation and on real hardware… load the full skill through Skill Me