Rust in hardware and autonomous systems: Highlights from Rust LA's latest meetup

Rust LA returned for another evening of technical talks, bringing together engineers from across Los Angeles to explore how Rust continues to shape the future of hardware and emerging technologies.

Hosted by Zoo and supported by Lawrence Harvey, this month's meetup explored Rust's growing role in telemetry, constraint solving and real-world engineering applications. Alongside the technical discussions, the event was another reminder of what makes Rust LA so valuable, a community where engineers can learn from one another, share ideas and discover how Rust is being applied across an ever-growing range of industries.

After the event, we caught up with Rust LA organiser Sean Urbain to reflect on the evening, the conversations that stood out, and what's next for the Rust LA community.

For anyone who couldn't make it, can you tell us a bit about the talks and the key themes that were covered?

We started off hearing from Ben Nguyen from Sift – who are working on a solution for storing and analyzing vast amounts of data. Ben discussed building telemetry and data solutions for hardware developers.

Adam Chalmers from Zoo.dev (Zoo is working on building AI agents that can create a blueprint of something you would like to have brought to the physical world, then prints it using their automated robots and 3D printing machines!) then stole the show with an amazing presentation about Rust- based Constraint Solvers in 2D sketching and his new Rust open-source project called EZPZ!

Were there any moments, insights or discussions that really stood out to you during the evening?

I really loved learning more about constraint-solvers and how they are used within CAD to define or undefine constraints for making different shapes and objects, and how subtle changes can have drastic affects to the designs.

What do you think attendees took away from the event?

As one engineer put it: “It was really interesting seeing all the different Rust hardware companies between Sift, Inversion, and Zoo Technologies, and just love that Rust is becoming so popular in that space and how much of that is in LA”

Rust continues to be adopted across a wide range of industries. What did this month's talks say about where the language is heading?

I think this last event shows the power Rust has in the embedded and autonomous spaces, but that is also becoming more widely adopted across a variety of emerging technology spaces, as well as all over the stack and not just the backend, as both Sift and Zoo are also using it in the frontend now!

What makes Rust LA such a valuable community for engineers, whether they're just getting started or have been using Rust for years?

I think Rust LA is becoming a really popular and safe space to share ideas and unexplored ways of using the language. The community is much more familiar with each other which is allowing for curiosity to be explored on why people are making the decisions they are in the language, and what things can be different. Its also an amazing place to learn about new open-source projects, new companies adopting the languages, and new engineers making significant waves within the language, like Adam and his new open-source project.

What's coming up next for Rust LA, and what can people look forward to?

July’s event is shaping up to be an amazing one! We have the current maintainer for the Tauri open-source project speaking, and our first ever Rust-in-Blockchain conversation happening as well with a brand new partner in Helius. While we don’t get to explore a new office and location, we do get to hear from 2 of the best Rust engineers in the country!

Find out more about the next event here!