I'm a JavaScript engineer. How can I get into Robotics? | Hacker News Reader

I'm a JavaScript engineer. How can I get into Robotics?

11 pointsjiert25 comments

I'm growing a bit tired of making browsers do things, and think it would be fun to make robots do things. I've messed around with Arduino, but nothing beyond that. Where should I start?

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Robotics with capital R comes with mechanics, algebra and control theory, my flatmate was building robots. They are super expensive though. I think an arrival point to go to "career" could be to stabilize a body standing still on top of a sphere or over two wheels.

Yeah, the level of math required is a concern career-wise.

If you want to get serious/make a career of it, there's no getting around the math. Even an embedded controls engineer needs to understand signals and timing.

Lots of drone companies need frontend engineers. Check out their job postings.

Here's an example: https://boards.greenhouse.io/kespryinc/jobs/50151

What you do really depends on what focus area you want to start diving in to. Try making a simple drone fly around for awhile automatically, you will learn all sorts of nifty things about control theory, mechanical models, digital signal processing, machine learning, telemetry and more.

Robotics as a field is quite large. There's all sorts of Robotics out there really.

JavaScript probably isn't the language of choice for Robotics though... C/C++ most definitely are a lot more widely used considering you want low latency with hard time limit control loops. Imagine if your robotics software suddenly decided it needed to garbage collect or JIT some code when it should've been making a decision to avoid collisions...

Thanks for the advice. Do you have any suggestions on a drone platform that would be good for a beginner?

I notice that the first thing that pops up on google for 'programming drones' is http://www.nodecopter.com/ which seems right up my alley, but I think you have a good point about learning C/C++

I am wondering why no body mentioned Espruino - http://www.espruino.com/ - do check it out

This may be what you are looking for: http://cylonjs.com/

It's a javascript framework for robotics.

Another good place to start would be OpenCV, a library for computer vision. It'll come in handy if you wish to build robots that are aware of their environment.

Have you seen http://nodebots.io ? Might be a good place to start for a JS engineer.

Cool, thanks!

Do you want to do it as a career or just to play with?

I'd like to play with it at first but with the goal of someday making it a career.

I'd take Thrun's course on autonomous robots.

I'd then implement it on a physical system - I'd focus on something other than Arduino, which doesn't translate well, and do it on RaspPi or similar.

Also, folks are right RE: languages - you'll need to pick up C/C++ as well, and likely a little Python/alternative scripting language.

Do you have a CS or other engineering degree? I'm going back for my masters in Robotics after 5 years in making browsers do things.

How about doing web stuff at a robotics company?

A very good idea. I mean, that's probably the best way to get a foot in the door.

Pick a framework and order some devices / components. I was attempting to get into this but never got beyond toying around with GPIO on the Beaglebone. You just have to start getting the equipment and dive into it.

Thanks. Yeah I bought an Arduino and some parts, but never got past the first bug robot build.

I'm also wondering where people interested in this stuff gather, and where some of the better tutorials / blogs / books are.

You're right though, I need to just start putting parts together.

Try tessel.io, although you're going to have to know some node.Js basics

I appreciate everyone's comments, thanks!!

LEGO Mindstorms

Solid. This is would also allow me to spend time teaching programming to my son as he gets older.

Or arduino? There are project based around NodeJS to communicate with arduino board (see https://github.com/voodootikigod/node-serialport)

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