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Getting into robotics as a software engineer

bou.ke

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Re: Getting into robotics as a software engineer

#11

Post by fake-name »

msadowski wrote: post #7

My journey is a little bit opposite to the author’s: I studied robotics and started learning programming by myself to create software for robots. There are two observations I have that can be useful to people making the software->robotics journey. * Agile for software-hardware is hard if not impossible. For software it can be reasonable, but it’s really hard to iterate on both hardware and software at the same time.…

I'd go one further and say that basically agile in hardware is fundamentally impossible in any way people commonly use agile.

If you have any custom hardware, you are basically stuck with a turn time of at minimum a day or two for any changes (often more, weeks + for new PCBs is common if you're not throwing huge amounts of money at people).

In this context, any process that depends on rapid small iterations is basically impossible, because each iteration just takes too much time.

Re: Getting into robotics as a software engineer

#12

Post by bouk »

bemusedthrow75 wrote: post #10

This is very interesting. But quite a lot of CS people -- well at least I hope it is not just me -- end up on the web development trajectory despite or because of having less than good enough understanding of e.g. trigonometry, geometry and calculus... all of which start to matter a lot when you are starting to make things; especially things that move and consume electricity. I am a good programmer but a weak mathema…

Some trig and geometry is definitely useful—but it's quite limited to be honest. For most things you can use existing algebra libraries and for most things someone else has figured it out before!

Re: Getting into robotics as a software engineer

#13

Post by AYBABTME »

I often feel the same urge to work on soft/hard stuff. Not sure why I don't actually do it. Although the current stuff I work on is very cool on its own and not Candy Crush. But it's really a scourge on this world that the top tier pay in the industry is to shove ads in front of people.

So I do physical things in my personal projects and then come to realize that the potential return on investment (time spent vs. expected money) would be peanuts in comparison to pure software. I would love to know of hardware related work that has decent margins. Or at least enough margins to justify paying a good salary to enough engineers to sustain them.

Re: Getting into robotics as a software engineer

#14

Post by mdorazio »

chris_st wrote: post #3

I've occasionally thought it would be fun (not necessarily productive!) to do something like the experiments folks have done with Genetic Algorithms, having simulated robots learn to walk, etc. in a simulated physics environment. The interesting bit would be to do it with real legs, sensors, servos, etc., to try to build up a "naive physics" library that can deal with balance, etc., by learning from physical experien…

You're describing something similar to what TRI has been working on for several years and seems to be making progress on: https://www.tri.global/news/toyotas-robots-are-learning-do-h...

Re: Getting into robotics as a software engineer

#15

Post by Avicebron »

chris_st wrote: post #3

I've occasionally thought it would be fun (not necessarily productive!) to do something like the experiments folks have done with Genetic Algorithms, having simulated robots learn to walk, etc. in a simulated physics environment. The interesting bit would be to do it with real legs, sensors, servos, etc., to try to build up a "naive physics" library that can deal with balance, etc., by learning from physical experien…

My university had a program that did this, I took it as a sophomore years ago while I was studying "evolutionary robotics", although typically we would simulate the robot in 3D virtual environment to test the reward mechanism for learning to walk.

Re: Getting into robotics as a software engineer

#16

Post by tonmoy »

As someone who works in making physical things, I disagree with the premise that the world of bits and bytes does not have impact. We will always need to manage resources including humans at a large scale and web apps are the best way to do that.

Re: Getting into robotics as a software engineer

#17

Post by mdorazio »

Really wish the author would have commented on salary. I personally think the reason more people don't end up on the hardware/robotics side is that the questionable-value fintech/adtech/socialtech pure software side of the world pays so much better and most developers follow the money.

Re: Getting into robotics as a software engineer

#18

Post by dartos »

bemusedthrow75 wrote: post #10

This is very interesting. But quite a lot of CS people -- well at least I hope it is not just me -- end up on the web development trajectory despite or because of having less than good enough understanding of e.g. trigonometry, geometry and calculus... all of which start to matter a lot when you are starting to make things; especially things that move and consume electricity. I am a good programmer but a weak mathema…

Web dev just has the best pay/perks for the amount of work.

Re: Getting into robotics as a software engineer

#19

Post by Galanwe »

shafyy wrote: post #6
eschneider wrote: post #2

Nice article. As someone who's also gotten into robotics from the software side, I'd also suggest learning a bit about the hardware side. If you're doing anything with custom boards and board bring-up, you'll need to be able to read a schematic and data sheet at a basic level. Being able to use an oscilloscope and logic analyzer is also _very_ useful. None of this stuff is terribly hard, but it's nice to know what to…

What can you recommend to start experimenting at home with robotics? Raspberry Pi?

I guess that depends on your software background. If C/C++ is not a problem, I would recommend Arduino. I found it simpler to just upload your program as the sole brain of your MCU, rather than working with a Raspberry Pi with Linux and all the abstractions, devices, etc that goes with it.

Re: Getting into robotics as a software engineer

#20

Post by DragonStrength »

bouk wrote: post #12
bemusedthrow75 wrote: post #10

This is very interesting. But quite a lot of CS people -- well at least I hope it is not just me -- end up on the web development trajectory despite or because of having less than good enough understanding of e.g. trigonometry, geometry and calculus... all of which start to matter a lot when you are starting to make things; especially things that move and consume electricity. I am a good programmer but a weak mathema…

Some trig and geometry is definitely useful—but it's quite limited to be honest. For most things you can use existing algebra libraries and for most things someone else has figured it out before!

It’s just used to gatekeep still. It justifies why they should hire the new grad masters student with a similar background over someone who has actually written the code before.
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