About

LemLib is a library for autonomous motion. It’s 100% open-source, and is written for the community, by the community.

Project Goals

  • Introduce students to concepts in programming and controls engineering

  • Make the autonomous period more accessible to new students

  • Challenge expert teams by making autonomous more competitive

Who We Are

Almost all contributors are competitors in the Vex V5 Robotics Competition (V5RC). We develop LemLib to challenge ourselves, give back to the community, introduce more students to STEM, and to learn about controls engineering and programming in a collaborative environment. We’re students after all.

How LemLib Started

LemLib was founded by Liam Teale in 2023 while in his junior year of high school. As an experienced and competitive student, he started mentoring rookie teams. He realized that programming was the most frustrating part for new students, even after hours of one-on-one learning. The student’s were well-versed in the concepts, but there always so many little things that would cause bugs and frustration. These had little educational value, and is where most students lost interest. But what if students could just skip this entirely?

That’s when Liam had the idea to publish a library for autonomous motion. Students can use the library and skip the time-consuming and frustrating process of implementing it themselves. This way they can learn faster, and stay motivated. These students would otherwise have never continued learning programming or controls engineering. It’s also available to everyone, everywhere, for free, and is fully documented, so anyone with internet access can use the library.

Respecting the Student-Centered Competition

A common misconception is that LemLib is a magic bullet which anyone can use to make an effective autonomous with no prior knowledge. This is most certainly not the case. Every single motion algorithm in LemLib has its own use-case, and needs to be tuned differently for different robots. And the better students know how it works, the more effectively they can use it. LemLib also makes it easy for students to find out about its inner-workings, with very well documented source code, a complete API reference, written tutorials, and links to further reading. The source code is also under the MIT license, a very permissive license that allows students to use parts of the LemLib source code in their own projects (see our License for more details)

Encouraging Student Contributions

Almost every contributor is a student competing in VRC, and we encourage contributions, big or small, from newcomers. We provide a unique opportunity for students to work collaborate with students from different teams in an environment similar to what they will experience in the workplace.