How do I get into robotics?

>>6560438
lrn mechanical, electrical, and computer engineering for starters.

>>6560438
buy yourself an Arduino kit with servos. Also.. learn C programming language. Easiest and fastest way to learn is by doing.. and making mistakes along the way. If you're looking to be more than a robotic tinkerer with pre-interfaced parts from kits, try a degree in electrical engineering. The Arduino kits are a good start though.. to get familiar with the stuff and start building right away

File: arduino.jpg (187KB, 554x396px) Image search: [Google]

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step 1 buy arduino
step 2 program arduino
step 3 attach servos motors, lights, sensors, ect.. to arduino
step 4 make arduino do stuff
step 5 repeat steps 1-4
step 6 ?????
step 7 Profit

File: mycar.png (1MB, 824x682px) Image search: [Google]

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>>6560467
>>6560468

Well I've started a autonomous object-avoiding car, what project can I do after? It's quite enjoyable and fun(fuck soldering) but i don't feel like ive learned a lot about electronics. Any decent books on theory?

>>6560442
You missed the main one: Control Systems Engineering. The others are all used for robotics (amongst many other things), but CSE *is* robotics.

Buy arduino boards and fuck around. That's how I learned, along with the help of a few online tutorials and two library books.

>>6561294
this

>why does my robotic arm vibrate
>why is it so slow
>why does it knock things over

>>6561301
What projects did you do? this is what I done >>6560494, I'm thinking of what to do after.

You might want to check out /diy/ as well:
>>>/diy/

>>6561294
control theory is included in both mechanical and electrical engineering. Rarely is it it's own degree.

source: I'm a MechE looking for a graduate control theory program.

>>6560494
> line follower. build your own sensor from photodiode/ led
> seguay/inverted pendulum robot: control theory galore
> quadcopter: lots of math if you do it right
> robotic swarm: swarm robotics is cool
> autonomous robot: look into ION or Magellan competition for possible tasks. lawnmowers/vacuum cleaners, cone finders, or maze runners
> stair climbing robot
> bipedal robots

as far as circuits my class used Hands-On Electronics which covers a lot of ground quickly.

>>6560438
Lego Mindstorms

>>6560438
>How do I get into robotics?
Don't, it's fucking shit. Unless you want to spend thousands, cheap and medium tier sensors are unreliable as hell, and makes even something simple as navigating a pain in the ass.
I did some robotics work at my uni, we had arduino based robots, lego mindstorms, corobots and half a dozen others. They were all a pain in the ass.
You're going to spend months just implementing hundreds of lines of redundancy and safety checks just so your dumb ass robot doesn't hit the wall 5 seconds after you start it up, even though its sensors indicate that the wall is 2 meters away. And then you're going to realize that for even the more expensive robots, its on-board cpu is so fucking weak that it can't even do basic image processing algorithms in real time. You can't do anything interesting with them.

>>6562165
What uni?

>>6562177
I'd rather not say. It wasn't a super wealthy one, so most of the gear we had was in pretty bad condition or old.

Anyway, let me give you an example of all the hoops you have to jump through just to do basic things. Your robot is going down a hallway, and you want to take a 90 degree turn. It's equipped with basic electric servo motors. Expensive ones can measure the exact amount of rotations it does, but you don't have that luxury. How do you turn 90 degrees? You can guess and test the rotation/second your robot can do, and it will work well enough for your first few tests. Next day it will be completely off. You realize that engine power completely depends on your battery's charge level. Near full it will turn much faster than when it's low.

What's next? Are you going to depend on the ultrasound sensors? They are almost completely worthless when rotating, as they cannot measure reliably when hitting surfaces (walls) at a steep angle. You're better off ignoring them as the readings will be completely off and just mess up the robot completely.
Use a camera? That could work, except most common boards can process images at roughly 1 frame per second at best. It's also going to be useless in non-perfect lightning conditions.
Connect the robot to a laptop through wifi and do the image processing there? That's probably the only choice you have, of course you'll have to literally carry the laptop behind the robot, otherwise it's almost guaranteed that the connection will drop all time the as long as the robot gets more than 20 meters away from the computer.
And even if you do image processing with a camera, it's a nightmare to get it going down straight on a hallway. It's probably going to zigzag from wall to wall.

Now, what I said mostly applies to hobby-level gear. That is, what you will be able to afford. The more impressive robots that you see on youtube cost tens or hundreds of thousands.

>>6562211
why didn't you just use a compass?
> literally carry the laptop behind the robot, otherwise it's almost guaranteed that the connection will drop all time
what'd you use?
x-bee's are great. We tested them to a mile/through brick walls/inside a nuclear reactor

I hear a master is usually recommended to get a good job in Robotics, is this true?

>>6562364
Every robotics job I applied to needed a masters.

>>6562118
> Rarely is it it's own degree.
It seemed fairly common when I was looking at course (this was 20 years ago, in the UK). Dunno if it's still as common, but it still exists, e.g. 30 seconds of google:
https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/prospectus/courseDetails.do?id=H6902014

>>6562846
Pretty sure metallurgy engineer was a thing back then.

>>6562211
Ah, well I'm hoping to get into a uni that has a focus on robotics.

>>6563252
Get into a transfer program for Japan.
You'll have to learn some Japanese, and maybe devote 1.5 or 2 years to learning the rigor of science in Japanese, but at least you'll make it to the land of robotics and rape dojinz.

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>>6560438

buy pic related, you'll know what to do

>>6563605
Don't do this for a beginner.
It's not the easiest interface for basic sensors

>>6563252
come to Supélec in France

>>6562118
This is true, there are however some pure Control Engineering programs out there. I'm currently attending one, about halfway through my 5-year program.

>>6560438

MIT opencourseware has free robotic courses.

http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/mechanical-engineering/2-12-introduction-to-robotics-fall-2005/

>>6563689
Do any of the opencourseware have video lectures?

I was going to suggest udacity's lecture series that I used but it suddenly started costing
money
dafuq Sebastian
https://www.udacity.com/course/cs373

>>6560438
Mechatronics.

>>6563707
wtf you have to pay for udacity now?

>>6563707
>>6563888
I just saw your posts from the front page and decided to look into it because that doesn't sound at all like their intentions from when they did talks on the project.

>What's the difference between enrolling in a course vs. viewing free courseware?

>The difference between enrolling in a course versus viewing free courseware is like the difference between attending a great class versus simply reading a textbook.

>The free courseware contains information, lectures, and auto-graded exercises. By enrolling in the class, you'll get project-planning advice and feedback on what you build to improve your portfolio. You'll also have a personal Coach throughout the course who will review your code, provide guidance on your project, answer questions about the class, and help keep you on track when you need it. After your final project review, you'll also go through an exit interview that Udacity will use to issue a verified certificate of accomplishment that is recognized by leading tech employers.

https://www.udacity.com/faq

If I'm understanding correctly, you really only pay for extra features that Udacity didn't used to offer in the past. The old features should still be available under "view free courseware"? I never took this robotics course so I have no idea.

>>6563901
Me again. Seems they also discontinued the free certificates. Which I'm not really that surprised about.

https://www.edsurge.com/n/2013-11-14-udacity-s-u-turn
http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/udacity-will-no-longer-offer-free-certificates/51757
http://blog.udacity.com/2014/04/phasing-out-certificates-of-free16.html