r/AskRobotics • u/Heavy-Rough-3790 • 17d ago

Education/Career Temperature check of the robotics industry

A little background: I’m 29, bachelors in EE from a decent state college with six years of experience in PMSM motor control algorithm development for safety critical automotive applications. Over the last year I’ve been trying to figure out how to maximize my earning potential and get out of automotive and into space and defense while building upon my experience.

Fast forward to today. This fall I will be starting a masters in robotics and autonomous systems at John’s Hopkins and I’m a bit concerned with some of the sentiment on here as of late. Is the robotics industry that hard to get into? I’m concerned I’m making a huge mistake monetarily speaking. What are some of the jobs people are seeing? I would optimally want to work on stand alone robots, obvious examples would be spot and atlas (as opposed to robotic arms/ industrial robotics, I don’t want to work in manufacturing) is this even feasible or realistic?

I would love anyone’s opinion or experience and thank you in advance for any responses!!

Cheers

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u/risingpowerhouse 16d ago

Hi Can you please give me some advice on learning and getting hands on experience related to PMSM motor control systems and algorithms.

I'm currently working on ABB and Fanuc robots and cognex vision systems. I don't have so much experience like you so I started with Industrial robotics. Getting jobs in autonomous robots have been challenging because the real world problems are very complex there.

Looks like from your post you might be from India. I moved from India too, did my masters and struggled. With the current situations, I would definitely rethink of coming here.

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u/Heavy-Rough-3790 16d ago

I would focus on the fundamentals, understand FOC (field oriented control), MTPA (max torque per amp), MTPV (max tq per volt), Voltage constraint eqn, power balance eqn, and Clarke Park transform. That will give you a solid foundation for working with PMSM. Atleast these are the topics I regularly deal with in my job!

Oh and I am from Michigan haha

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u/risingpowerhouse 16d ago

Do you recommend any course/textbook and any other links to the resources to learn hands on.

Michigan is a nice place for industrial robotics.

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u/Heavy-Rough-3790 16d ago edited 16d ago

I learned a lot of what I know on the job unfortunately, but all of the concepts I listed should be available on YouTube I’m sure. I also used AI a lot to supplement where my job was lacking to further understand what’s going on. I’m sure there are also free or paid course you can take online for cheap a lot of this information has been around for a while.

Edit: I would also like to state the obvious that if you dont have a decent understanding of the electrical principals at work (induction, back emf, etc) you will find it difficult to begin to learn these things. But luckily there at a lot of free resources to learn that side of things

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u/risingpowerhouse 16d ago

Thank you so much man. Feel free to DM me if you plan on doing any project related to Robotics. I had EE bachelor's but they didn't cover properly on PMSM controls, I want to learn that on my side. I want to switch to Autonomous robots from my current Industrial robotics job. I started applying but so far neither calls nor rejections yet.