i wish to make something. it should be more accessible than ever and the next thing but only the tech giants seem to capture most of the conversation.
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27 Comments
beklein
If you want to make something, have a look at https://huggingface.co/lerobot
For hardware check: https://github.com/TheRobotStudio/SO-ARM100
There will be a world wide hackathon in two weeks time, no better way to get started and get to know some people: https://huggingface.co/LeRobot-worldwide-hackathon
r2_pilot
Start by deciding its purpose. The form will follow the purpose. If you know electrical engineering, you won't make as many mistakes as I have. If you know mechanical engineering, you won't take as long to design the components as it took me. If you're a competent programmer, you won't be as slow integrating the hardware into a cohesive whole as I am. If you've read The Design of Everyday Things, you're ahead of the curve in terms of making it accessible.
lukeinator42
A good starting point is learning to use ROS https://ros.org/. Once you learn ROS you can interact with/use a wide variety of robots. Robotics is a fairly multidisciplinary field though, so it really depends on what area of robotics you are interested in.
TrackerFF
I'm not joking, but some of those Lego robotics kits can work just fine for getting your feet wet. Yes, even if they are made for kids.
When I started out, it was with microcontrollers, breadboards, sensors, actuators. And even though it was in college, I do wish I had just played around with more high-level stuff first.
fusionadvocate
Robotics is more accessible than ever. The tech is here to build almost anything you want. Dream big! We can now buy cameras for a couple dollars, microphone arrays, sensors, motors and drivers. 3D printers are everywhere, stock components also available.
Or 'manage your expectations', download ROS and build another mediocre turtle bot powered by some Nvidia Teraflop chip (if they allow you to boot their sdk), and spend a year learning "abstractions" defined by other people for other projects.
artofcode
Depending on your goals, micromouse could be a good starting point as well. Look up to veritasium video if you want to get inspired.
bryanlarsen
Has anybody tried Crunch Lab's HackPack? It seems it could be quite well suited for this purpose — they claim to make it straight forward to go beyond the kit, and they've certainly taken some of the right steps in that direction.
borjah
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 grow.
Embedded is the adjacent field after you complete the course. Maybe something like zephyr project.
If you want to get you feet wet with mechanical. Buy a A1 mini and play with onshape (www.onshape.com) to design your first pieces, supports for the motors or the board, try create you own gripper.
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. Start with the RP2040 or the RP2350, they are cheap and well documented. This skill will evolve hand by hand with the embedded coding. Start small. Learn about H-bridge and brushed motors before doing the jump to the bigboys and FOC control with brushless. Get a cheap soldering iron. If you can, a clone of the JBC C245 tips. Is the most versatile and you can find stuff in alie xpress for 45 or 50$ and would be similar to the tools you will find in the field without breaking the bank.
Search for ROS meetups. I could point you to some depending where in the world you are.
And above all, it will be a long journey. Don't dispear, do at your own time but don't forget the objective.
mellosouls
(Ask HN:)
Noted not just for pedantry but you may get more attention.
GaggiX
You can buy an old Roomba and cannibalize it for your own project, it's a start.
This is an example: https://youtu.be/mTpkV7xZln0
amacneil
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 now. Expect to spend about $250 USD including a Jetson Nano for a good kit, up to $1000 USD if you want some more sensors
– If you can’t afford a real robot, play around with simulators like Isaac Sim and Mujoco
– Check out LeRobot, excellent framework for ML robotics from Hugging Face
– Learn the basics of ROS
(pubsub), even if you don’t end up using it, a lot of the industry jargon and design patterns come from ROS so it helps to understand it. Think of ROS like Ruby on Rails, it’s a heavyweight batteries-included framework with lots of opinions.
– ROS does have some nice libraries for manipulation (MoveIt) and navigation (Nav2) using more classical (non-ML) methods
– Leverage AI tools such as ChatGPT and Cursor when you get stuck, it’s a lot faster than Googling when you’re just getting started and don’t even know the right term to search for.
– (Shameless plug) Check out two tools I’m working on: mcap.dev for logging and foxglove.dev for visualization
csullivan107
There are many ways to start with a more academic knowledge of robotics. Courses, ROS, Programs etc. Just picking one is a fine start and you will learn something, but you may not have fun or appreciate the context for what you are learning, which makes it hard to care.
It also depends on what you're trying to learn. Programming? control? electronics? mechanism design? There are many different aspects that require their own expertise. I personally think of a roboticist as someone that can be functional in all the disciplines and bring it all together. Some one that can build a robot from scratch.
This advice is targeted towards someone starting in robotics with an emphasis on building a totally custom robot. You are doing the whole thing from scratch, no kit. (kits are super useful, but I personally like building everything and making hardware that works for me). In my eyes, if you haven't built it in hardware, it probably isn't a robot.
As a research roboticist, my best advice is forget Learning it all up front and just start building. You will probably have strengths and weaknesses, but robotics is a very multi-disciplinary problem and at the start, requires some head banging in what we like to call integration hell. Just Trying to build something does a couple things. It gets you acquainted with the interaction of all aspects (mechanical, electrical, software) of a robot and how they interact. Most importantly it gives you context for sll the things you learn later on. Build something, come across a problem, and google/brute force your way to a solution. You will stumble across context relevant resources and lessons in the moment. Especially at the start, a more "formal" education is too broad and comprehensive for the curious roboticist.
My simple advice is to just come up with something simple and SEND IT!
For mechanical – Onshape for 3D design (free tier) and a bambu A1 mini 3d printer can get you building anything you want for <$400. A couple nights of CAD tutorials will get you started. Hell you can even start with cardboard and hot glue if this is cost/time prohibitive.
For electronics – Browse http://www.adafruit.com or http://www.sparkfun.com for sensors and microcontroller boards. They both support QWICC connections which makes getting sensors plugged in and running super easy for a beginner. For computation and control a basic Arduino Uno or one of the adafruit feathers will do just fine. Don't get caught up in the internet debate on what the best microcontroller/single board computer is. The best robot is one that works and it is VERY easy to get in over your head in this realm and fall into the premature optimization track. Better to get something working that under performs than to never build at all.
For software – Most lower level robotics uses c++, which I think scares people. It is mostly because it is one level above hardware. Arduino/common libraries take care of all the hard stuff and you don’t have to worry about large scale things like garbage collection, memory leaks, or efficient code off the bat. The websites above have libraries, examples, and tutorials for every sensor. Even a non programmer type can smush the example code together in a functional way and get something up and running.
As you try to build you will learn and get more complicated. Robotics is so vast and large its best to focus on learning the skill you need at the time. But my main advice is just go build the thing and the learning resources/skills will present themselves when they are needed. Otherwise it is just too much to take a more planned approach.
kypro
There's 3 core parts:
– Electronics (batteries, resistors, capacitors, etc)
– Robotic hardware (motors, sensors, microcontrollers, etc)
– Software
The electronics learning is always going to apply to start there if you need to, then depending on your goals the hardware and software will vary.
For simple DIY projects I'd start with getting an Arduino or Arduino compatible board and just play around with building things with sensors, LEDs, motors, etc. You'll find lots of kits and resources online for simple Arduino projects.
More complex projects are probably going to need to be Linux-based (AI, machine vision, etc). In which case you might want to look at building something with a mini PC, Raspberry Pi, NVIDIA Jetson.
These days robotics is super accessible, but can cost a bit depending on what you want to do… That said, most of the time you'll find there are cheap ways to build POCs to validate your ideas first.
storus
If you want to understand how it works, take first Stanford's CS223A and then MIT's 6.832 Underactuated Robotics courses. They have lectures online as well. Udacity's Self-driving Car Nanodegree might be a good idea after those two.
tonyhart7
I love to create an robotic arm like cyberpunk 2077
light_hue_1
Everyone is jumping the gun here. You just haven't told us enough.
How much time do you have? How much do you know about hardware and software? What do you want to do? How much money do you want to invest? What do you want to learn?
The path forward changes entirely depending on the answers to these questions.
sho_hn
It's not that hard to get started! I make robots like this (that one's just to enter the wiring stage) using alu extrusion beams, some 3D printing, off-the-shelf servos and SBCs:
https://i.imgur.com/9YIHT9P.jpeg
Modern SBCs are decently powerful and run for long enough off a standard drone LiPo pack that you can fairly easily build yourself a solid little platform to learn and experiment with different controller approaches. Stereo cams, LiDAR modules, etc. are also readily available at a quality level that is decent enough.
You'll quickly realize the amount of work needed to bring any of the more advanced approaches to a productization level, but a "I implemented enough of this to get the principle" mini-Boston-Dynamics is in reach of the hobbyist.
In fact, the programming craft aspect of all of this is relatively simple. Basic implementations are typically not architecturally complex or a lot of sloc. You'll find that it's more about learning some control theory, and it'll also get you into machine learning.
aiwejrlaiwj
A really top-tier robotics engineer is going to be a generalist across mechanical, electrical, and several software domains, and then also a specialist, deep expert in one or two of those. So I'd recommend doing a bit of everything then picking a specialty to learn in depth. Build a really simple kit robot and then program it to do simple stuff using ROS. Write a few ROS nodes from scratch to do something simple, things that existing ROS nodes already do. Then learn why the STL ROS options are (most likely) better than yours.
I strongly recommend taking the generalist approach. It makes you a much better engineer in the long run. I had a friend call me up enraged one day. He got woken up at 1am and ordered to drive across the state to get a site back up and running because his hardware was broken and the very expensive software team was sitting around wasting their time. So he got to the site at three or four AM and found that the room full of software engineers, three PhDs among them, didn't understand that BOTH of the battery terminals needed to be connected. Yes, batteries in fact have a positive and a negative. And these people were each getting paid twice as much as him. He left that company and became hardware leadership at a much better company, thank goodness. My point is, super-specializing in the most profitable hyper-niche right off the bat is going to make you a very mediocre robotics engineer who might be successful in the short term, but might find yourself unemployed in a few years when we find a better modality to replace your hyper-niche. Specialists win the sprints, generalists win the marathons.
jmpman
If you’re an engineer, go volunteer for a First Robotics team, and advise high schoolers on your area of expertise.
_tqr3
Rather than watching videos or reading on the internet, I think its worth it to get your hands dirty.
For starter, I always recommend a RC car with an Arduino (or cheaper equivalents).
Following can be had for less than <$100
– SG90 servo motor
– 28BYJ-48 stepper motor
– ULN2003 driver board
– UNO R3 Controller Board (Elegoo)
– RC car chasis/3D printed chasis
Hack around, add sensors, cameras etc. Next would be to build a robotic arm.
aerophilic
Honestly, and I feel like a promoter… but get either a hackpack from Mark Rober or as otherwise mentioned, mindstorms from LEGO.
Crunch labs: https://www.crunchlabs.com/
As someone in the industry (I literally can call myself a Robot Master having a Masters Degree in Robotics), these simple “kid kits” are phenomenal. When you first start out, the hardest part is knowing the hardware is actually going to do what you tell it to do. Simplifying the mechanical engineering/electrical engineering so you can immediately create real world actions makes a huge difference in giving you motivation to keep going.
Once you have the basics in place and you understand mechanisms, sensors, and some algorithms, you can move on to other parts of robotics.
However, keep in mind robotics is really about system thinking… you have to understand trades between sensing, thinking, and acting. But most importantly you have to remember you are dealing with the real world… you can’t as easily write a unit test and know that a particular actuator will behave exactly the same way every time.
zerr
Related: what about Embedded Systems?
agcat
The best way to learn is just by running small experiments and being curious about the field.
Just a few weeks ago, along with my partner i started this Sunday experiment of building and learning robotics as a software engineer.
We ordered a one hand robotic arm with orin nvidia gpu to start running experiments.
to commit and make it a habit, we also started documenting our learnings and experience.. if this motivates you you can check it out here – https://youtu.be/pAwkl6zd0ws
olalonde
A common beginner project is to build a line following robot. You get to learn a bit about electronics, microcontroller programming, sensors, actuators, etc. e.g. https://projecthub.arduino.cc/lee_curiosity/building-a-line-…
chasd00
Adafruit is your friend. Get one of their feather boards, an imu breakout, motor controller and then a simple robot chassis + motors from Amazon. Code in circuit python and save yourself the build chain and debug hell that is traditional embedded programming. Circuitpython / micropython is great, well supported, and makes embedded programming more fun. You’ll encounter the haters see it as training wheels but trust me, it’s great.
Edit: you could take a more top down approach and get like an ardupilot, use it in rover mode, and just really learn how to configure and use it to its full potential which is pretty far out there. There’s also a lua scripting capability last time I checked.
iancmceachern
All the responses, most of which I've seen are great, are very software focused. I get it, makes sense for HN. There is a whole world of hardware in this space. Learning how to design mechanisms that work, and last. Custom motors, controllers, actuators, hardware.
For that there are some great points of entry now. Places like pololu robotics, Adafruit, sparkfun, etc. are all as good as ever and are great jumping off points into building and eventually designing hardware.
nogridbag
I've just started this journey. I always wanted to get into electronics and robotics, but instead went the software route. I've picked up an Arduino and microbit over the years, but they sit collecting dust.
It may sound silly, but I asked Gemini to recommend a learning plan and it came up with a detailed plan along with time estimates in months. The first step is reading and going through all the exercises in Make Electronics (third edition) which is very hands on.