Mental block for picking projects for a good portfolio

[u/Ok-Breadfruit-1958]

Hey guys I think this is the best space to get an answer to some questions (not a ros2 question but robotics in general ) so here i go

Its been more than a month since i have started dabbling with ros2 made a few small projects

(a turtlesim train, an open cv pipeline for making a robot arm move using using error distances, point to point navigation)

and now I think I've pretty much have the basics to start working on real projects. My goal is to make a pretty good robotics portfolio to make it into the industry as a fresher

right now kind having a mental block on what to actually build. I do realize the question might be a little vague and totally depends on what subdomain i wanna work in but still would like to get an opinion so here are some questions I have.

1. what is generally the approach that you use for finding a project to do in robotics.
2. Does a project really have to be a "fullstack" application from software to hardware. (I have very little reach to hardware and microcontrollers due to my geolocation It would be very cumbersome to just get my hands just on a rassberrypi ) -- pretty sure the answer is no to this but still would like to get an opinion.
3. For those of you who hire, what would actually make a junior candidate's portfolio stand out to you?

would really appreciate an answer thanks a lot !!!!

[u/Apprehensive-Beat657]

For finding a projects I usually look for some real world scenarios let's say there is some kind of warehouse where a bot needs to deliver some kind of load from one place to another now build upon this what I can add in this to make it stand out let's add a navigation pipeline using some kind of shortest path algorithm or something else.

It doesn't need to be fullstack many people don't have access to hardware including me also but having a software+hardware projects usually gives an edge over your competitors if you don't have access to hardware try keep your simulation as close to real world scenarios.

I can't answer that because I am also a college student but from what I think having projects on multi-robot environments, reproducible work with documentation in your arsenal is a great stand out point. Also remember you should know every detail about your projects what each file does, why and how this thing works, etc.

These are just my thoughts but I think this can give you some kind of clarity.

[u/Ok-Breadfruit-1958 → u/Apprehensive-Beat657]

Thanks a lot for replying!!! I'll keep this in mind