Innovate at Viam: The 20% project initiative

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Emily Egan
Head of People

At Viam, we believe that building good software starts at home. Our aim is to simplify the building, monitoring and data management of smart machines and robots, and there is no better test ground than our own engineers!

For this reason, we created the 20% Project Program where our own engineers can spend 20% of their time at work tinkering on side projects. The only criterion: that they use Viam to bring them to life.

This hands-on approach allows our developers to better use and understand our product suite, find bugs, fix usability issues, and make Viam a greater platform, all while flexing their creativity. Let’s take a look at some of the participating software engineers, their projects, and learnings below.

Meet the innovators: our engineers' projects

Ethan Look's Air Quality Rover

Ethan Look, Ojima Abraham, Zack Porter holding their creation. Project Team Members not pictured: Anjali Nainani, Nat Hartman, and Roxy Farhad.

As a Senior Engineer on the Fleet Management team, Ethan Look’s day-to-day involves enhancing Viam’s app and the Modular Registry, an open-source database for developers to easily access hardware components and algorithms.

While his primary role focuses on updates and improvements, he regularly collaborates on innovative projects with cross-functional teams. That’s where his Air Quality Rover comes in.

“Doing a 20% Project is an opportunity to use the Modular Registry and to see what it’s like to actually deploy code to your robot and package what you built into something that’s reusable.” - Ethan Look

The rover's purpose is straightforward: to autonomously navigate the office, collect data, and create a dashboard on air quality and other environmental metrics, such as temperature, humidity, pressure, and various gases.

“I had the opportunity to understand how the system works being the user of Viam, and it is completely different,” Ethan explained.

Michael Lee's Working Wheel

Michael Lee standing proudly with his Working Wheel.

Another standout project coming from a Senior Engineer on the Fleet Management team is Michael Lee's Working Wheel, a tool integrating with Google Calendar to display availability. The wheel lets people know if you are in a meeting, working from home, on vacation, or have an open calendar.

“The goal is really to test the Micro-RDK, which is in Beta