Robotics Suppliers:

Below I have compiled a list of many of the services, suppliers and resources I have found to be extremely useful during my research.

Mechanical Components:

• SDP-SI (Bearings, gears etc.)
• McMaster-Carr (Huge selection with excellent delivery times, not going to be the cheapest supplier)
• Online Metals (Decent supplier of metals with a good selection)
• Pololu (low cost/quality motors)
• Maxon Motors (High quality/cost motors)

Getting Started in Electronics Prototyping:

• Sparkfun (Lots of breakout boards for those new to soldering)
• Adafruit (more breakout boards)
• Arduino (Most easily picked up embedded environment)
• Pololu (Motor Drivers/ Voltage regulators)

More Advanced Electronics Prototyping:

• Texas Instruments (Lots of useful ICs for motor control, power management etc.)
• Digikey (Electronics supplier with everything under the sun decently organized)

PCB Fabrication:

• Aoyue (Low cost PCB Prototyping Tools)
• OSH Park (Low cost limited options PCB Fab)
• OSH Stencil (Fast and easy way to do surface mount soldering on the cheap)
• Itead Studio (very cost effective if 10 boards or more needed, with more customization available)

Theoretical and Computational Resources:

3D CAD:

• OnShape (Browser Based, basic but effective CAD new capabilities continue to be added free if you don’t mind your files being public)
• Solidworks (Standard simple and intuitive CAD package for creating mechanical assemblies, can be pricey)

PCB CAD Packages:

• Eagle (Free Trial Version with limited Capabilities)
• kiCad (open source, free)

Analytic and Simulation Tools:

• MATLAB (Lots of built in functions for quickly exploring new algorithms/ numerical techniques)
• NASA Tensegrity Robotics Toolkit  (A set of tools for simulating tensegrity robots)

Control Systems:

• Numerical Renaissance (Free! Written by my PhD advisor covering a wide span of topics related to linear control and simulation)
• Mechanics, Third Edition: Volume 1 (A great way to learn Lagrangian Dynamics)

Tensegrity Systems:

• Tensegrity Systems (An insightful look at efficient simulation and control of tensegrity systems)
• Being Human (An Excellent Blog by my NASA advisor, Vytas Sunspiral)
• Biotensegrity Models (Tom Flemons creates some awesome models to simulate biologic structures)