Rishabh Garg, Tesla Optimus — Challenges in High Performance Robotics Systems
Aug 25, 2025 · 12:43
Rishabh Garg, a robotics software engineer at Tesla, explains how unexpected robot behaviors often stem from software and hardware integration issues rather than the control policy itself. Using a toy CAN bus system, he demonstrates how communication delays at 1 Mbps can cause loop execution gaps, leading to jitter and stuttering motors. Solutions such as multithreaded pipelining and synchronization primitives can reduce cycle time but introduce new problems like missed messages and desynchronization. He highlights how logging to disk on a Raspberry Pi can freeze the robot for 30 ms, and how priority inversion in the Linux kernel can cause system dropouts for seconds. The episode delivers concrete techniques for diagnosing and resolving these real-time system challenges.
