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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.