Module 00 · Start here

Every robot project starts with the same three questions. How will I work on this? What tools do I need? And what is the whole thing actually made of? This module answers them, so that the rest of the course is about robots instead of about installation errors.

You will meet the habits that make the course work, build a workstation that runs ROS 2 Jazzy and Gazebo Harmonic, and get a map of Physical AI: the sense, think, act loop and the stack of hardware and software that supports it. Nothing here is hard, but skipping it is expensive. A broken setup in Module 03 costs you an evening.

By the end of this module you can…

• Study the course efficiently using labs, exercises, quizzes and the Rivet assistant.
• Run a full robotics workstation: Ubuntu 24.04, ROS 2 Jazzy, Gazebo Harmonic, a Python virtual environment and VS Code.
• Prove the install works by running a ROS 2 talker and listener.
• Draw the Physical AI stack from motors to foundation models and say what each layer does.
• Place any robotics topic you meet later on that map.

Lessons

Lesson	What you build	Time
How this course works	A project folder, a git repo and a study plan	25 min
Workstation setup	A working ROS 2 Jazzy and Gazebo Harmonic install	45 min
The map of Physical AI	Your own one-page map of the stack	30 min

Module project

A verified workstation and a map. Finish with a git repository named kinemata-workspace that contains a SETUP.md listing your OS, ROS 2 and Gazebo versions with the output of the verification commands, and a one-page sketch of the Physical AI stack with the course modules marked on it. If the talker and listener from Lesson 2 run, you are ready for Module 01.

Next: How this course works