The onboarding handbook for new members of the Advanced Telerobotics Research Laboratory: research standards, paper templates, the lab's tech stack and hardware, and the rules we work by.
Advanced Telerobotics Research Laboratory · Department of Computer Science · Kent State University
 Research standards Integrity, IRB and CITI training, authorship, data, reproducibility and AI disclosure. |
 Writing papers LaTeX for ACM and IEEE venues, a venue table and ready-to-compile templates. |
 Tech stack From drivers to AI coding agents: ROS 2, Isaac Sim, MuJoCo, Fusion, Docker and more. |
 Lab rules Code of conduct and everyday best practices for a shared lab. |
 Safety Emergencies, soldering, robots in motion, batteries, resin and lasers. |
 Hardware The lab's robots, computers and printers: specs, setup and safety. |
The Advanced Telerobotics Research Laboratory at Kent State University is an innovation research laboratory focused on exploring the frontiers of telepresence robotics, tele-embodiment, autonomy and artificial intelligence. This handbook is what we wish every new member had on day one. Work through the checklist below in your first week; your mentor can help with any step.
Accounts
- Accept the invitation to the ATR-Lab GitHub organization. Ask [who sends GitHub organization invitations] to invite your GitHub account, and turn on two-factor authentication first.
- Join [Slack workspace] and the [main lab channel].
- Join the lab's Discord server and say hello to Teo, its assistant bot.
- Subscribe to the lab calendar, [lab calendar].
Trainings
- Complete the lab safety orientation with the lab safety contact (Marcus Arnett, marnett5@kent.edu; backup: Lucky Sah, lsah@kent.edu) before you use any tool, machine or robot.
- Complete CITI human-subjects training before you work on any study with people. Most human-robot interaction studies need it; see human-subjects research.
Read
- The code of conduct and the safety rules.
- The best practices: Slack, calendar invitations, equipment checkout and shared GPUs.
Set up
- Set up your machine with the lab's dev guidelines (Git, editors, formatters and linters).
- Install ROS 2 with All things ROS 2, then skim the tech stack for the tools your project uses.
Meet
- Meet your mentor, [mentor name], and agree on a first task and how often you will meet.
| For | Ask |
|---|---|
| Accounts, equipment, keys and most day-to-day questions | Lab manager: Marcus Arnett, marnett5@kent.edu (Discord: marcodotio). Secondary: Irvin Cardenas, icardenas@kent.edu (Discord: irvinxyz) |
| Safety orientation, injuries and hazards | Lab safety contact: Marcus Arnett. Backup: Lucky Sah, lsah@kent.edu (Discord: lucky_sah_22) |
| Approvals, funding and anything about the lab's direction | The director, Jong-Hoon Kim, jkim72@kent.edu |
| Path | What it holds | Read it when |
|---|---|---|
research/ |
Research standards, writing papers, the publishing checklist | You start a study, write a paper or prepare a submission |
templates/latex/ |
Compilable IEEE and ACM paper skeletons with the lab's affiliation block | You start a new paper |
tech-stack/ |
The lab's software stack by layer, one page per major tool | You set up a tool or pick one for a project |
lab-rules/ |
Code of conduct, safety rules, best practices | Your first week, and whenever you are unsure what is allowed |
hardware/ |
One page per robot, computer and printer: specs, setup, software, safety | Before you use a device |
AGENTS.md |
Instructions for coding agents: repo map, sources of truth, style, checks, open items | You edit this repo with Claude Code, Codex or another agent |
Found something wrong or out of date? Open an issue or send a pull request. Keep the style described in AGENTS.md: sentence-case headings, Kent State editorial style, sources linked next to every technical fact and [bracketed placeholders] for anything only the lab can confirm. Run the checks listed there before you open a pull request.
Text and code in this repository are released under the MIT License. The names and logos of the Advanced Telerobotics Research Laboratory and Kent State University are trademarks and are not covered by that license.
The LaTeX templates load the IEEEtran and acmart document classes, which are distributed separately under their own licenses (LaTeX Project Public License); they are not part of this repository.
ATR Lab docs ·
About the lab ·
Getting started ·
Dev guidelines ·
All things ROS 2 ·
All repositories
Advanced Telerobotics Research Laboratory · Department of Computer Science · Kent State University ·
www.atr.cs.kent.edu