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Getting into robotics as a software engineer
41–50 of 105 posts
Re: Getting into robotics as a software engineer
#42Really 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.
What is questionable-value? People pay for questionable things, that brings value to them, though that value is questionable? Do not get it. Though i understand the personal resentment.
Re: Getting into robotics as a software engineer
#43If only anything closer to hardware wasnt paying this bad...
A lot of SEs leave industries like semiconductors for web dev jobs that pay waay better
Re: Getting into robotics as a software engineer
#44I 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. exp…
> 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.
This cannot be said enough, IMO. The web software world's endless quest for the shallow and lucrative is exhausting.
Re: Getting into robotics as a software engineer
#45What would be a good starting platform for a programmable drone? The article suggests playing around with a Raspberry Pi Pico, but this is a bit bare bones. Are there any kits, or entry level programmable drones on the market with a reasonable toolchain to program sequences?
I came here to ask the same question. Anyone?
Re: Getting into robotics as a software engineer
#46What would be a good starting platform for a programmable drone? The article suggests playing around with a Raspberry Pi Pico, but this is a bit bare bones. Are there any kits, or entry level programmable drones on the market with a reasonable toolchain to program sequences?
A Raspberry Pi Pico has a large multiple of the kind of compute that cruise missiles have so should be more than plenty for a programmable drone.
Re: Getting into robotics as a software engineer
#47Nice 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?
Raspberry Pi, Teensy, Micro:BIT, ESP32, Arduino. Some steppers, some servos and some sensors. $200 will get you more gear than you'll be able to use in the first six months or so, it is incredible how cheap this stuff has become.
Re: Getting into robotics as a software engineer
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Raspberry Pi will work with the Arduino environment as well.
Re: Getting into robotics as a software engineer
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
Robotics is very niche and the market is dominated by early stage startups (since most of them go out of business a few years in), so salaries are average unless you are working specific jobs for FAANG. Job hoping usually means moving elsewhere, since working close to the hardware makes it much easier, which in turn means having a good picture of what is a competitive salary sometimes is not obvious. source: I work i…
Thanks for the AMA! Do you see a lot of opportunities for people utilizing computer-vision based SLAM (aka Structure from Motion)? I quite like that technique, but it seems too niche to make a consistent career out of it.
SLAM and localization in general are early bottlenecks in mobile robotics solution, unless the core business of the product is localization itself (e.g. waymo, cruise, etc.) it's not uncommon for that to take a back seat during product development later on. In my experience lidar based solutions are more common out there due to their "simplicity" and safety for industrial applications (i.e. PL-rated)
You certainly can work with visual slam in the industry, but the job pool for that is not very big, I would say.
Re: Getting into robotics as a software engineer
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
Robotics is very niche and the market is dominated by early stage startups (since most of them go out of business a few years in), so salaries are average unless you are working specific jobs for FAANG. Job hoping usually means moving elsewhere, since working close to the hardware makes it much easier, which in turn means having a good picture of what is a competitive salary sometimes is not obvious. source: I work i…
What kind of robotics? It's a pretty wide field.
Mobile robotics, slam/localization and robotics backend.