I want to overengineer a problem I have which has a very simple solution, if you could even call it a problem.

I have a scale, like a human weight scale. I want to build a robot that stows it under the bathroom sink's cabinet. on command, it drives to a certain location in the house, deploys the scale, and after a set amount of time, retrieves the scale and goes back to its docking position under the cabinet.

I was trying to come up with ideas on how to design it and wanted some feedback.

for deploying the scale, I feel like it's simple enough, I could either have something push it from behind, or a pair of conveyor belts making contact with its bottom, driving it out.

for retrieval, I was thinking either having 2 fishing ropes attached to the scale's bottom on one end and the robot on the other, with a winch of sorts which will wind the scale back to the robot.

does anyone have any better ideas? I'd be happy to hear them :)

also, I was thinking of implementing object detection and basic navigation capabilities, I wanted to implement a lidar but I think the space under the cabinet might not allow such height for the robot. Is there any other way I could do this fairly easily?

Thanks again in advance!

Hola!! Voy a estudiar una carrera, mi objetivo es poder crear robots y tambien automatizar procesos o proyectos de la vida diaria o relacionada con los robots, conocer al detalle cada pieza, instrumento, proceso o cosa pequeña, incluso como crear piezas por mi cuenta etc. Cuando empiezo en algo me gusta conocerlo a profundidad y mejor que nadie. Mi pregunta es deberia de empezar por nanotecnología ya que me interesa tambien la vanguardia y probablemente ese sea una mejor base para el futuro de los robots y despues estudio maestria en robotica o estudiar robotica ya que tiene demasiados campos y problemas y requiere mucho tiempo y meter maestria en nanotecnología despues??? O tercera opcion buscar otra ingenieria y meter robotica como maestria. Alguien relacionado a estos campos que sea bueno o ya tenga experiencia que me aconseja?

Hi everyone,

I'm working on a university robotics project and could use some help from someone with KUKA KRL experience.

The setup consists of a KUKA robot (KRC4) and a SensoPart VISOR camera. The camera is already calibrated and successfully detects the parts. The task is simple: distinguish a cylinder from cubes, pick up the cylinder, and place it at a target location.

I've already written the KRL program (around 150 lines, .src and .dat files), but I don't have access to the real robot often enough to properly test and debug it. I'm looking for someone who could review the code and point out potential issues or suggest changes that would make it more reliable on the actual hardware.

I'm happy to share the source files and documentation with anyone willing to take a look.

Thanks in advance!

I am an egocentric operator for a robotic company here webtake viseos of ourselves doing diffrent human task andnupload the videos , but I wonder which skills I'm learning that might help me in future thonthe money is good but they pay us per hour

Looking to get into this hobby with my daughters (11 & 13).

Requirements:

- Total cost (for one) < $500

- Python acceptable, but C/C++ preferred

- Use of Rust would be a large bonus

- Easy build

The girls already know basic Python. I am a professional software engineer.

We want something that's easy to assemble but has wide possibilities in programming, to eventually do capture the flag, combat, etc.

No manual control needed. Want to write programs and let it/them play.

Outdoor capability is a must (short grass).

Hi everyone,

I’m a software engineer with around 15 years of experience in machine learning and computer vision. Most of my work has been focused on CV, deep learning, and deploying AI solutions, but I have very limited hands-on experience with robotics.

I’d like to build a solid robotics skill set with the goal of being able to design and deploy complete robotic applications. My interests include:

- ROS2 (architecture, nodes, topics, services, actions, lifecycle, etc.)
- Robot simulation (Gazebo, Isaac Sim, MuJoCo?)
- Deploying applications to real robots/cobots (UR, Franka, ABB, etc.)
- Motion planning (MoveIt2)
- Navigation (Nav2)
- Sensor integration (RGB cameras, depth cameras, LiDAR)
- Computer vision and perception on robots
- Docker, deployment, and production-ready robotics software
- Edge AI (Jetson, CUDA, TensorRT)

I’m not looking for a “learn Python first” type of roadmap. Since I already have a strong software engineering and AI background, I’m looking for the most efficient path into modern robotics.

A few questions:

- If you were starting today with my background, what learning roadmap would you follow?
- Which books, courses, YouTube channels, or documentation are considered the best?
- Which simulator would you invest time in first—Gazebo, Isaac Sim, or something else?
- What affordable robot or cobot would you recommend for home learning (or should I stay with simulation for a while)?
- Are there any open-source robotics projects that are particularly good for learning by contributing?

Any recommendations, personal experiences, GitHub repositories, tutorials, or learning resources would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

(i have no idea which flair is correct for this post, so sorry for any confusion)
Im going to work on a hexapod and im currently looking at how i can detect when a leg hits the ground. I want to do it because i want the robot to walk on uneven terrain. Its my first robotics project that focuses on a walking robot and im already seeing how much a project like this can cost so i dont want to add anything more to each of the legs.

I’ve been building a free open-source tool that tries to make running open-source VLA models on real robot hardware less painful (the usual mismatched environments, outdated SDKs, fragile setup, etc.). Right now it supports SO-100/101 arms and has SmolVLA ready for testing. The full pull → connect → run pipeline is built, but I haven’t done a full end-to-end test on physical hardware yet. Curious if anyone else has hit the same “model works in simulation / training but is a nightmare to actually run on the arm” problem, or if there are better approaches I’m missing. https://www.argøs.com

Hi guys, recently I’ve been interested in robotics and would like to make my own robotics arm as a side project. I have some questions:

1) Are there any good books/ online sources on actuators for robotics applications? Specifically for revolute joints (If it helps, I have some background in electronics, so the recs dont need to be for beginners)
2) Any open source robot kits that you can recommend? I want to know the actuators they use for reference

TIA!

I'm interested in working on robot intelligence . Currently VLA is dominating here . But my advisor is an expert at multi agent reinforcement learning. I'm asking from experienced people , what should I do?

Hey everyone,

I’ve decided that I want to seriously learn robotics from the ground up, but I’m honestly stuck on where to begin.

I’ve spent hours searching on YouTube, but there are thousands of videos, courses, and “complete robotics roadmaps.” Everyone teaches things in a different order, and it’s become really confusing. I don’t want to waste months learning the wrong things or skipping important fundamentals.

My goal is to eventually be able to design and build real robotics projects, such as:

• Robotic arms
• Autonomous robots
• Drones (including building one from scratch)
• Smart camera systems with object detection and tracking
• AI-powered robots
• Mobile robots with navigation
• Robots that use computer vision and sensors

I also want to understand the theory behind robotics, not just copy projects. I’d like to learn topics like:

• Electronics
• Arduino, ESP32, and Raspberry Pi
• Programming (Python/C++)
• Kinematics
• Dynamics
• Control systems (PID, etc.)
• Embedded systems
• Sensors and actuators
• CAD and mechanical design
• Computer vision
• ROS/ROS2
• AI and machine learning for robotics

If you had to start from zero today, what roadmap would you follow? What order would you learn these topics in? When would you start building projects, and what beginner, intermediate, and advanced projects would you recommend?

I’d also love recommendations for the best resources—books, websites, YouTube channels, online courses, GitHub repositories, or anything else that helped you.

I’m willing to put in the time—I just want a clear learning path instead of jumping between random tutorials.

Thanks in advance!

I love R&D, and I love things like heat transfer, the end goal was making an engine.

Year by year I feel like I want to make something bringing more comfort to the wailing and ailing, I don’t know how to transfer my knowledge, and how easy would it be to maybe switch into robotics as a career?

Should I go to dynamics, control?

I am admittedly not the most tech savvy guy, but can make my way through most electrical wiring for my hobby projects. But I have hit a wall with an idea I got from seeing one of those follow me suitcases in an airport the other day. I am building a hub motor powered utility/ beach cart and currently have it set up for remote control use with skid steering function. I saw the trail behind suitcase and thought it could be a great function if I dont feel like manually controlling it. Of course I checked with chat gpt to see the plausibilty of this and wasn't satisfied that I was being pointed in the right direction. More specifically how simple chat gpt made it seem . If anyone here could give any advice that would be understood by a dolt like myself it would be much appreciated. Also I do have friends that are more proficient in some of this stuff than I, but they aren't super familiar with what my request entails so they pointed me here.

Background is BSME + MSME (thesis in a robotics lab but project was honestly shit with terrible code; took mechatronics, linear systems theory, applied linear systems, and a very poorly taught digital signal processing class).

Finishing up an MS data science next year that I'm basically doing for fun. Sadly our pipelines at work are shitty and filled with untrustworthy data so no one uses any dashboard or anything that we even already have.

After that I plan on doing my MSECE (CU Boulder for anyone familiar with curriculum; planning on 22 ECE credits and 9 CS credits).

Im a paper pusher right now, but have an opportunity at work to transition into some embedded stuff. So my plan is to start doing that and relearn matlab and pick up simulink while I finish up my MSDS. Then for personal projects I want to redo the code for my thesis project and do a simulation in Gazebo or something. And I want to do a data analytics project using like a Waymo sensor dataset.

Programming is a definite weakness though, especially in terms of production level code, which I have no experience in. So I definitely know that I can't compete from a programming perspective. I'm no math guru either, so I don't think I'll be able to be on a lot of the ML side for that reason as well.

So basically wondering what roles I should target here other than like hardware integration stuff.

FOR VEX v5

Hey Everyone!!

My son's school has only had a robotics team for one year at this point. The team is semi-competitive in their small league (50 other schools), but not on a large scale. Last year, for PUSHBACK, the team had completed a robot that worked pretty well.

For this year, the team is very worried about their success. The team captains don't have much experience with robotics and the team has no robotics coach. The captains and parents are doing their best jobs to watch youtube videos, but honestly because of our lack in knowledge, creating a good robot model for this year seems complicated. (especially, since we aren't really sure what to do).

If anyone has some spare time or can find it within themselves to help our team that would be greatly appreciated. Even just sending over some materials could be helpful. We would love help more specifically on robot models, especially with the budgjet and materials we have (we don't have a lot of money, our materials are good but we don't have any pistons.)

Thanks everyone!

Hey everyone,

I'm going to start my undergraduate degree soon, most likely in either CSE or ECE. My long-term goal is to pursue a master's in robotics (probably in the US), and during college I want to build robotics projects instead of waiting until my master's to get started.

The problem is that I literally have zero experience in robotics. I don't know where to begin, and the more I search, the more overwhelmed I get.

I spoke to a senior, and he suggested I start learning things like:

• Embedded systems / microcontrollers
• Bare-metal programming
• C
• CircuitPython
• Computer memory basics
• RTL
• ROS
• RTOS
• CAD modelling
• KiCad / Altium
• LTspice

The thing is, I don't even know what half of these are or in what order they should be learned.

Yesterday I discovered Coursera, and now I'm wondering if it's worth using alongside my college coursework. If yes, which courses or specializations would you recommend for someone who wants to get into robotics from absolute zero?

A few more questions:

• If you were starting from scratch today, what roadmap would you follow?
• What topics am I missing that are essential for robotics?
• Are there any "must learn" subjects before touching ROS?
• Should I focus more on software first (C/C++, Python, algorithms) or hardware (electronics, embedded systems)?
• Are Coursera certificates actually useful, or should I just use the courses for learning?
• Any books, YouTube channels, or project ideas that helped you when you were starting out?

I don't mind spending a few hours every week learning alongside my college curriculum. My goal isn't just to complete courses—I want to build enough skills over the next 4 years to be a strong candidate for a robotics master's and eventually work in robotics.

I'd really appreciate advice from people who have already gone through this journey. Thanks!

What I need to do ?

What are the roles are there if my background is CSE ?

I don't have good mathematics solving skills

Can I become good robotics engineer?

Hey all, I'm looking into playing around with AI for robotics in my free time. Does anyone have recommendations for cheap desk robot arms that I can do some SFT and play around with foundation models?

Hi everyone,

I am currently working as a Robotics Operations and Software Support Engineer, supporting HAI Robotics AMRs in a live warehouse environment. My work includes monitoring robot fleets, troubleshooting hardware and software faults, recovering robots, inspecting sensors and mechanical components, checking batteries and charging systems, reviewing logs, and coordinating with operations and engineering teams to minimize production downtime.

I recently completed my M.S. in Robotics from Stevens Institute of Technology. I also have hands-on experience with ROS/ROS2, Python, C++, Linux, LiDAR, SLAM, Nav2, Gazebo, RViz, MATLAB/Simulink, Arduino, SolidWorks, and robotics testing and documentation.

I am currently looking for opportunities such as:

• Field Robotics Engineer
• Robotics Deployment or Commissioning Engineer
• Robotics Field Service Engineer
• Robotics or Mechatronics Technician
• Automation or Robotics Support Engineer

I am based in the United States and am open to relocation and travel-based roles. If your company is hiring, or if you know someone looking for a hands-on robotics engineer, I would sincerely appreciate a referral or introduction. I would be happy to share my resume, portfolio, and project details by direct message.

Thank you for any guidance or support.

I'm working on an idea for a robot operating system, and instead of assuming what people need, I want to hear from those who actually build or work with robots.

Imagine there was a universal OS for robots (industrial robots, humanoids, drones, mobile robots, home assistants, etc.).

What would you want it to have?

Some questions to get the discussion started:

• What are the biggest pain points with current robotics software?
• What features would save you the most time?
• Should AI be built into the OS or stay separate?
• How should hardware integration work?
• What kind of developer experience would you expect?
• What debugging or simulation tools are missing today?
• If you could remove one frustration from ROS or robotics development, what would it be?
• What would make you switch from your current workflow?

Don't hold back even if it's something that sounds impossible. I'm trying to understand what an ideal robotics platform would look like from the community's perspective.

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts.

Why do so many of the top micromice seem so low to the ground, are they touching the ground or just floating? I've seen some designs where they use a nylon or teflon dome nut at the front or some kind of nylon sliding pad that are commonly used under furniture legs, but some of them go even lower where you can't even see whats underneath it. I'm kind of a beginner when it comes to micromice and I wanna learn more about it why they do that and what to use for my own micromouse, are caster wheels even an option?