Rebuild the onboarding handbook

[MarcoDotIO]

Summary

Rebuilds the lab-rules repository as the onboarding handbook for new members. It covers:

• the lab's rules and safety;
• standards for academic research, LaTeX formats for ACM and IEEE venues;
• the tech stack;
• a resource page for each piece of lab hardware.

Written for people and for coding agents.

What's in it

• README.md: a first-week checklist (accounts, trainings, reading, setup, mentor) and a "Start here" grid.
• lab-rules/:
  • Code of conduct: every existing heading written out, built on Kent State policy (policy numbers cited). It is a draft until the director approves it.
  • Safety: every rule from the old page is kept. It adds Kent State emergency and EHS contacts, robots in motion, batteries, resin and lasers.
  • Best practices: kept and extended.
  • The files were moved in their own commit so their history is kept.
• research/:
  • standards: integrity, IRB and CITI, authorship, data, reproducibility, and AI-use disclosure under the current ACM and IEEE policies;
  • writing papers: a venue table for HRI, CHI, ICRA, IROS, RO-MAN, RA-L, IEEE VR, CoRL, RSS and Humanoids;
  • a publishing checklist.
• templates/latex/: IEEE conference and ACM sigconf skeletons with the lab's affiliation block. Both compile with tectonic, in every review and camera-ready variant.
• tech-stack/: the stack by layer, with one page each for Isaac Sim and Isaac Lab, MuJoCo, Gazebo, Autodesk Fusion and Inventor, Unity, Docker, Claude Code, Codex, LeRobot and ROS 2.
• hardware/: specs, first steps, software, safety and troubleshooting for:
  • Unitree Go2 Pro
  • Booster K1
  • OpenManipulator-X
  • LeRobot SO-101
  • Jetson AGX Thor
  • Raspberry Pi 5
  • ROSMASTER X3
  • Formlabs Form 3
• AGENTS.md: the repo map, sources of truth and open items. CLAUDE.md imports it.
• Also: docs CI, the brand header and social preview.
• License: GPL-3.0 is replaced with MIT, as the lab lead asked.

For the reviewer

• License change. Moving from GPL-3.0 to MIT changes the license of text written by Irvin Steve Cardenas and Nate Kanyok, so please confirm it's OK.

• AI coding tools. Kent State's AI Hub (kent.edu/ai) says tools outside its approved list, naming Claude and ChatGPT, "may be used for personal/non-sensitive work only, do not input university data." The Claude Code and Codex pages limit agents to public or non-sensitive code until the director confirms with security@kent.edu which lab work they may touch.

• Docker Desktop licensing. Docker's subscription terms exclude U.S. public education institutions from the free tier. Decide whether the lab needs a paid plan for macOS and Windows; Docker Engine on Linux is unaffected.

• Go2 and minors. Unitree's disclaimer says the Go2 is "not suitable for people under the age of 18". The page asks for approval before any demo with K-12 visitors.

• Factory passwords. Booster and Yahboom publish their robots' factory SSH, VNC and hotspot passwords. Confirm the lab has changed them.

• Code of conduct approval, and a CAD default (Fusion or Inventor).

• Lab-specific details to fill:

  • the safety contact, and the first aid, extinguisher and eyewash locations;
  • Slack, the calendar, checkout, mentors, and each device's owner and location.

  They are listed under "Open items" in AGENTS.md and in hardware/README.md#open-items.

How it was checked

• Linters:
  • brand_check.py: 0 errors. The warnings are intentional placeholders, and the [ATR] email tag.
  • markdownlint: 0 issues.
  • Relative links and anchors all resolve.
• Links: lychee on every external link reports 0 errors. Sites that block bots (ACM, IEEE, Autodesk, Meta, raspberrypi.com, Unitree support) are listed in .lycheeignore; they were read in a browser.
• Facts: every spec, version, policy and phone number comes from an official page read on Sept. 30, 2026 and linked next to the fact. Anything that couldn't be verified is left out or bracketed.

After merge

Upload .github/assets/social-preview.png under Settings → Social preview.

Related PRs: .github · about · dev-guidelines · all-things-ros2

🤖 Generated with Claude Code