/r/robotics
/r/robotics
Hey everyone, I’m a Mechanical Engineer looking to explore robotics as a career in Germany. I love DIY projects, working with Arduino, and I’m learning Python, but I don’t have formal training in electronics, control systems, or embedded systems. Is it realistic to enter this field if I learn these skills on my own? And what kind of personalities or interests are a good fit for a career in robotics? Just trying to figure out if this is the right path for me and if the industry hires people with my background. Would love any advice on where to start!
We're Georgia Tech students scoping out issues with ROS, Isaac Sim, and other AI/ML workflows for robotics development:
The dev tool we're thinking of making is- cloud environment with drag-and-drop nodes
- automatic dependency & package configuration
- AI-assisted node development based on the hardware used
- built-in sim
- one-click deployment
We'd love to hear your feedback and any other pain points.
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I am a beginner in robotics, and I have a question. Why do the movements of autonomous general-purpose robots, like Tesla's Optimus, Figure's humanoid, and other similar robots, appear to be slow? I would like to understand the fundamental mechanisms behind this.
I've seen videos of Tesla's Advanced robot, and other robots so I wondered if I myself could make one. I don't want to make it do things like pick up stuff but I want it to run on Ai responses so it can talk to people. I also want it to know it's surroundings whenever it enters a room, instead of scanning the room like a Roomba so it knows where to go and where not to go as soon as it's in a new area. It just has to be a talking and moving small robot in the shape of a cartoon cat, so it won't have too many joints.
I am trying to build a digital Genie that allows people to control equipment in labs or factories remotely. This could be either a testing lab, a full-fledged production facility or a lab with environments so sensitive that it's not conducive for a human to enter and work.
It should give people eyes and ears to see their labs or factories through an AI-enabled camera and AI-enabled microphones. The Genie must then be able to access the desired devices and give control over to the user that's trying to access it, giving the illusion of a Genie actually entering the device.
Would you actually use such a product, if all the necessary security features were built into it?
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1rE3Am-aW8afIp6Dm7R8-TgMWksuLyoXrJBMWPFoYg2Q/edit
I made this quick tutorial to help you get data from a joystick with the esp32 for controlling robotic projects.
In other words, instead of robots that specialise in things, we end up with just a few robots that can stock shelves, do your plumbing, electrical work, wash and fold your clothes, cook food and clean dishes, etc.
Is this realistic?
KIT
I'm trying to attach a custom motor to this kit, which has a D-type shaft that is 4 mm wide. However, the wheel in this kit does not accommodate this size, resulting in a loose and inadequate connection between the motor and wheel. I would like to know the shaft size of the motor in this kit so I can purchase an adapter or find another solution to ensure a snug fit between the motor and wheel.
has anyone done the Robotstudio II class and did you find it useful? also, what do you do for work? job position & normal tasks? Trying to decide the value in a maintenance/development type roll.
Hello, let me just start by saying i have no experience with solid works, i am working on a project where i have the 3D model of a robot and i need to import it into a simulation software like simulink. However the CAD file of the robot is just one .step file, so it gets imported as one part. Is there anything i can do to separate it and be able to do processes in matlab or simulink on each part for example left leg right leg and so on? I tried opening it up on solidworks and splitting up the solid bodies into separate files like a friend suggested, but the file had 1972 surface bodies and just 2 solid bodies. so from what i understood that wasn't gonna be possible. Does anyone have any suggestions as to what i should do?
Edit: i asked the company for the cad files of the robot with each separate part , they just sent me the same file again and saif thats all they have.
Hi, this gear, from an old power drill that I wanted to use for a project, has come lose. Is there any way to reattach it to the axle?
Hey everyone!
One thing I've been wondering is how people in the robotics (amongst every other industry with electro- mechanical systems...) will deal with potential tariffs on Chinese suppliers?
Let's go ahead and place any politics aside in this lol.
Everyone I know building in robotics (for real production use cases, not hobbyist) gets their motors from China right now, and there's no clear winner in terms of a pure US alternative that I know of.
So I would love to hear from all of your experiences, and what the impact is here.
Are there good alternatives? How much more expensive are they (average percentage, etc)? Concerns about handling volume? And anything else you can think of!
My friends and I gained access to a few Kinova gen 3 robot arms and want to do a project that can be used in the industry but can’t find any use case. What problems do you guys see in the industry that might need this type of multi robot arm system?
Anything that absolutely needs more than one arm and doesn’t require too much end effector manipulation would do. We can also 3D print and do testing with a scaled down version of the tasks with our arms.
edited: added robot arm model
Hi, I am trying to move the ABB GoFa Virtual Controller using the External Guided Motion feature. I was able to identify the EGM RAPID Server Code thanks to this GitHub repo: https://github.com/lsurobotics/egm-for-abb-robots/, and I am able to send positions to the Cobot using the following repo: https://github.com/macs-lab/abb-egm-with-python. However, the code is getting stuck at EGMRunJoint
and EGMRunPose
after running the statement once and is not progressing beyond that. Could this be because of the virtual controller? I apologize if my question seems vague.
Hello all, I am very new(as in 1 week )to robotics and 3D_simulation. My goal is to run the robotis-op3 in gazebo or rviz (in simulation). I have cloned the robotis-op3 git to my src folder. But when I run the rosdep, I get the this error(see image).
FYI: I am using ros2 (v:jazzy) on Ubuntu 24.4. So far, I understand that op3 was made with catkin dependencies, however ros2 uses colcon/ament (I guess). So how do I make it work with ros2, I've searched the whole internet for 2 days now, n tried some ways, but they just led to more errors!!
Please guide me!! Thank you
So I have mocap data which consists of local joint transforms relative to the rest pose pose transforms which define the skeleton. This mocap data is of a human. And I have created the kinematic model using the rest pose transforms. For the time being I have made all the joints as ball joints so I can directly apply the poses in the local joint transforms. It is working as expected as the ball joints are oriented using quaternions which I can easily extract using the matrix to quaternion conversion. However to make the model more realistic I would like to model the knees and the elbow joints as hinge joins with a fixed hinge axis. I would now like to know how to transfer the animation in this case, where the hinge joints would just expect a scalar value. I have tried converting the transforms to axis angle however the elbow joints don't really seem to have a fixed axis along which they rotate. I first though that it would be some amount of noise that was changing the axis. But when I checked the variance it was close to 90 degrees so I'm not really sure how I should proceed with this problem. Any help is appreciated. Maybe I could share a collab notebook so that we can discuss further...
Hi everyone,
I’m conducting a study on skill development through hands-on autonomous robotics projects, specifically aimed at bachelor, master, and PhD students. This survey focuses on what students learn, develop, and apply during practical projects—whether in final projects, student groups, or research initiatives—not just classroom material. If you’ve been involved in autonomous robotics work during your studies, your feedback would be incredibly valuable. Your insights will help us understand how real-world skills are built in this dynamic field. Here’s the link to the survey: Google Forms Survey
Thank you for your time, and please feel free to share this with others who may be interested!
Trying to cram as much as I can into a year. This coding/robot/3d printing hobby officially started in February so I’m learning as I go. I’m sure alot of things can be done better but working on improving 🙏🏽 I want to build a 3rd bot (I’m not done with these two yet ) but I’m po 🙏🏽
1st vid is BB1-zero
Pi 4 bot with 3 supporting esp32 units
2nd vid is BB1-1 Pi 5 bot with 5 supporting esp32 units.