Ask HN: How to get into Robotics? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How to get into Robotics?

5 pointsMichaelRazum5 comments

After ChatGPT, Stable Diffusion and co. I'm kind of convinced that the next big thing will be robotics.

I know it's a huge field. To be honest I'm interested in robotic control, not the hardware.

So what do you think, what might be a good start? Let's say with a good background in python/c++ and math.

My ideas so far - buy some robot hardware. Maybe lego and play with it - try to get into a robotics company. There are not many and as far as I can tell most of them work in the industry space. - try to enter a research group in an university. Not sure if they would accept me. It's about 10y ago I studied - something else... like starting a comoany. But without domain knowledge it doesn't make much sense

So maybe you guys have some ideas? Actually kind of surprised that there are still so few robotic jobs and companies. Guess it is harder then I think...

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What's your current professional background?

Robotics is a wide field with many opportunities:

- Computer Vision - mechanical hardware - path planning and localization, SLAM - Control engineering - Software engineering - ...

Then, there are plenty of more business oriented roles: - Application engineering => how can robots solve the customers problem - technical sales / marketing - ...

I think it makes the most sense to leverage your previous experience to move into the field and than find out how to continue. E.g. Start as an application engineer and then move towards control. Or if your background is ML/AI, Computer vision and then progress into another field.

> Actually kind of surprised that there are still so few robotic jobs and companies. Guess it is harder then I think...

Robotics takes a lot of people and money. Hardware, Software, an actual problem to be solved, ... I think once we are seeing a platform(s) to build robots more easily, there will be more companies as well.

>What's your current professional background? Python - a bit machine learning background in the financial sector. Have worked on performance critical software in pure C as well as some Data Science / Machine Learning projects. So a bit far away from robotics. Still hope to be able to get it, at least in form of an internship. Just not sure where to start.

> Robotics takes a lot of people and money > Robotics is a wide field with many opportunities Excactly, seems right now that it is pretty expensive and a wide field. Let's say I would like to be able to train a robot to "Open the fridge and take out a beer". That would be something "cool" and guess possible with current technology. Especially after looking what boston dynamics can do... So where would you go?

> Let's say I would like to be able to train a robot to "Open the fridge and take out a beer". That would be something "cool" and guess possible with current technology. Especially after looking what boston dynamics can do...

Well yeah, but you realize that BD has at least 10s or more of engineers work on such their projects.

I think with your background I would opt for a pre-made platform (there are many, don't have experience with any of them) where you worry mostly about the software.

Maybe, just use your laptop webcam or a Raspberry Pi to do computer vision, somewhat related to your DS/ML experience.

Thanks man!

>I think with your background I would opt for a pre-made platform (there are many, don't have experience with any of them) where you worry mostly about the software.

Yeah guess this is realistic.

> Maybe, just use your laptop webcam or a Raspberry Pi to do computer vision, somewhat related to your DS/ML experience.

To be honest I just don't see computer vision as a challenge. Guess the interesting part comes in object manipulation. So if I could get a "good" robotic arm that in theory could make cup of tea. That would be great... It just seems there is nothing available, that is somehow accesible without spending more than 10k on it.

I know what you mean. Object manipulation is just something where even the hardware is really expensive.

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