About

Vertile supplies high quality components and products for robots and robotic research. Vertile is run by me, Nathan Tsoi. I'm a full-stack robotics researcher specializing in human-robot interaction, currently a Postdoctoral Fellow with Texas Robotics at the University of Texas at Austin. I received my PhD in Computer Science from Yale University. Each project, which has resulted in a product, was carried out to fulfill a need I've had at some point. I like working on interesting projects and sometimes these projects result in products that are useful for me. If they're useful for others as well, I make extras and sell them.

I value excellent performance and economic value, so I've done my best to meticulously design, source, and craft each product for the highest quality at the lowest possible cost. In order to document each project for myself and for others, I blog about many of my projects.

The Life of a Vertile Product

Each product starts out its life as project that would be useful to me if the product already existed. For some projects, like the FluxLamp, I start with my requirements and pull together a design. Some products, like the Omnibus line of flight controllers, have been designed in collaboration with partners around the world. Other products, like the CFOCer brushless motor controller, are based on open-source designs with small improvements for manufacturability.

For the electronic products I sell, small batches of components are sourced globally. This is in order to maximize quality and value. For some products, I have the surface mount components automatically assembled, but for others I do the surface mount component assembly and reflow soldering myself, using a FluxLamp of course. Either way, the final assembly of components that cannot be reflow soldered is done by me, in my basement shop.

Some products are machined or 3D printed. I manufacture these in my basement shop. As much as possible, I open source my designs and make them available on my blog. You can read more about my 3D printing and CNC Machining setup on my blog as well.

I do the final assembly, firmware installation, and product testing myself. Thanks for taking the time to learn about me and Vertile. If you choose to buy something from me, you are directly supporting my research and funding work on future projects.