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Ask HN: How do I learn robotics in 2025?

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Re: Ask HN: How do I learn robotics in 2025?

#51

Post by kens »

jmpman wrote: post #24

If you’re an engineer, go volunteer for a First Robotics team, and advise high schoolers on your area of expertise.

And if you're in high school, join a First Robotics team. (In First Robotics, teams build a moderately large robot that can zip around a field, grabbing things and shooting balls for instance. It's like a competitive sport but with robots competing. The robots are controlled by drivers, but can also act autonomously for more points. The task is different each year, with sub-tasks of varying levels of difficulty, so teams with widely different skill levels can take part: some robots are very simple while others are amazingly complicated. It's a great way for high schoolers to learn engineering skills, anything from programming to mechanical engineering.)

Re: Ask HN: How do I learn robotics in 2025?

#52

Post by hommelix »

borjah wrote: post #10

Do this course https://github.com/henki-robotics/robotics_essentials_ros2 Totally free, don't need to buy anything just a computer. I've been designing electrical hardware for robots for the last 4 years for a big corporation and I can tell you, the fun and money is in the software but having another skill is awesome. Robotics is a place where multiple fields converge and if you find a good team they will help you to…

> As for the electrical engineering, is the one with most pitfalls and the most expensive. A wrong voltage will release the magical smoke and is another 30$ for a board. Tread carefully.

I enjoyed reading "Exploring Beaglebone" by Derek Molloy a few years ago, because the book has sections "how to destroy your beaglebone" and "how to interface with electronics". The website seems broken. The book's ISBN is 978-1-118-93512-5. Some of the recommendations there (voltage clamping circuit on the 1.8 V analog inputs) can save your board.

Re: Ask HN: How do I learn robotics in 2025?

#53

Post by glouwbug »

In all honesty I’d try and model a 2d 3-link arm in software with forward and inverse kinematics. Then I’d model the inertia of the bars, and model DC motors to apply a torque to the bar interconnects. I’d then model PID controllers for each motor to smoothly move the arm. I’d then move to 3D. Once the physics is modelled you’ll find speccing the motors, solidworks, motor drivers, and MCUs relatively straightforward if you have some basics in electronics.

The fundamentals of robotics is in the math; think control theory. Don’t over emphasize the surface level like ROS, arduinos, and Lego kits. Those are implementation details

Re: Ask HN: How do I learn robotics in 2025?

#54

Post by moffkalast »

amacneil wrote: post #13

Robotics is definitely getting more accessible! But keep in mind it’s a whole different world from traditional web or desktop software development, so don’t be surprised by the relatively steep learning curve. Keep at it though! - Buy a small robot kit from Amazon or a local reseller. Yahboom make some good robot toy car kits. Hugging Face have the open source SO-ARM101 that plenty of companies manufacture and sell n…

Maybe ROS is the way to get started in robotics and for AGVs it's probably the most resourced thing one could learn.

But that is really only for AGVs. Once you get into the air, it's all Mavlink (always has been), ASVs and AUVs still run MOOS, and robotic arms are far more likely to use ABB studio than Moveit and the research is going towards LeRobot with end-to-end control, not classical methods. IoT systems are mostly Home Assistant, and well, some just use MQTT directly instead.

ROS is probably not as ubiquitous as us ROS devs would like to believe, what one should learn really depends on the field one wants to be in.

Re: Ask HN: How do I learn robotics in 2025?

#55

Post by beau_g »

amelius wrote: post #25
borjah wrote: post #10

Do this course https://github.com/henki-robotics/robotics_essentials_ros2 Totally free, don't need to buy anything just a computer. I've been designing electrical hardware for robots for the last 4 years for a big corporation and I can tell you, the fun and money is in the software but having another skill is awesome. Robotics is a place where multiple fields converge and if you find a good team they will help you to…

> the fun and money is in the software This could change if there are breakthroughs in AI, which is not unlikely in the coming few years. Any thoughts on that?

All we really need for the robotics AI revolution is to deploy many tens of thousands of well built, cheap, reliable robots sold at a profit that customers get tons of utility out of, get petabytes of data back from them while complying with data privacy regs, train a model on this data on a few thousand H200s, and then deploy that model back to the robots, repeating the cycle every few weeks. The rest will be easy.

Re: Ask HN: How do I learn robotics in 2025?

#57

Post by spiralcoaster »

appleaday1 wrote: post #46

No one here mentioned to get a 3D printer but get a 3D Printer asap.

Right, so instead of getting involved with the basics or foundations of robotics, the OP should spend a lot of time and money investing in a 3D printer, learning the nuances of 3D printing, and ... for what exactly?

Re: Ask HN: How do I learn robotics in 2025?

#58

Post by borjah »

sabareesh wrote: post #39
borjah wrote: post #10

Do this course https://github.com/henki-robotics/robotics_essentials_ros2 Totally free, don't need to buy anything just a computer. I've been designing electrical hardware for robots for the last 4 years for a big corporation and I can tell you, the fun and money is in the software but having another skill is awesome. Robotics is a place where multiple fields converge and if you find a good team they will help you to…

Interesting one thing that is more satisfying with robotics is that because you can see your creations in real world

That is sooooooo much true. The pride and joy to see the robot moving, no words can describe the feeling!

Re: Ask HN: How do I learn robotics in 2025?

#59

Post by freedomben »

spiralcoaster wrote: post #56

[flagged]

I agree, it was a low effort question, but it is obviously interesting to a number of people on this site. Op is also not wrong that it can be very difficult to find good information on robotics currently. If you are in academia and are plugged into the right departments, there is plenty of good info, but it is complex enough that getting into it as a hobby is difficult.
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