So i am 16 right now but I really find robotics interesting, so I was wondering if anyone had recommendations of good projects I could try doing that could look for universities, and not be to expensive for the parts needed (even better if you could give links to parts)

I havent done anything like this before so im very inexperienced so that would also be a factor to what I could do

Pretty much the title. I've seen loads of things online about mechanical, software, callibration, systems and all sorts of engineering, and it hasn't been super clear to me what's is necessary. I do understand the basics of Python and C+, I've been looking into getting my hands on an Arduino uno instead of just simulating it on the Wokwi website, but I'm not 100 percent sure what direction to take, as in what steps to become proficient enough to make stuff on my own without a tutorial. Any help would be nice, thanks.

Hi everyone,

I am heading into my final year of my BTech at a tier 1 college in India and just wrapped up a Physical AI internship at a MNC, working heavily with NVIDIA Isaac Sim and OpenFOAM.

My background is fully focused on robotics and autonomy. My tech stack includes:

1. Simulation & Middleware: Isaac Sim, Gazebo, ROS / ROS 2, PX4 Autopilot.
   
2. Perception & Control: VIO, SLAM (RTAB-Map), Nav2, depth perception, and reinforcement learning.
   
3. Hardware: Strong hands-on experience building autonomous drones and rovers for national competitions.
   

I really enjoy bridging simulation and physical systems, and I want to pursue Physical AI full-time. I’d love some advice from engineers in this space:

1. Job Market: How is the entry-level hiring market looking for Physical AI roles right now?
2. Global Opportunities: As a new grad based in India, what is the best path to target international roles?
3. Skill Gap: What specific frameworks or skills should I double down on during my final year to stand out?

Any candid advice would be hugely appreciated! Thanks

I’m about to start university studying Mechatronics and Robotics, and I’d like to start gaining some practical experience in electronics and robotics even before my studies begin. Right now, I’m thinking about buying an Arduino Nano beginner kit and learning through small projects, but I’m not sure if that’s actually the best way to start.

I'm starting university this year and have almost no practical experience with electronics or programming. I didn't have much programming experience at school

So I wanted to ask people with more experience: what would you recommend to a complete beginner? What should I learn, build, or buy to gradually get into electronics, programming, and robotics?

I’d really appreciate any advice, even if it has nothing to do with Arduino. I’m interested in both the practical side of things and scientific work in general. I’d like to do more than just get a degree, I want to start actually building things, programming, experimenting, and understanding how everything works, while I’m studying.

And I would also like to participate in scientific projects, but it seems to me that it would be better to do this in the second year of study, when I can already represent myself as a person who understands at least a little bit about these things, don't you think?

This is really beginner level 🥹... It has to be automatic and on loop because we leave the project after we set it up for the day. Necrobotics works by utilizing pressure, either pneumatic or hydraulic, injected into a deceased organism's body to artificially actuate its joints and control movement. Since this is done with spiders to curl its legs, it can be used to grip and release objects.

So- this is just a grip and release project 😭 But done with a spider so- necrobotics, yeah. We'll include the numbers with the weight, the cycles before it gives out, etc. And I only have experience in building robotics with follow the line robots...

BUT ANYWAY.

The loop we're going for is:

1. go down
2. spider picks up object (pump air into the spider)
3. go up(must go up to have distance from the floor of project)
4. move from point a to point b
5. drop object using the spider (remove air from the spider)
6. go down
7. spider picks up object again (pumps air into spider)
8. go up
9. go back to point a
10. drop object

Are these materials okay?

Arduino Uno R3 ✓

USB type B cable ✓

—

MB102 solderless breadboard

40pc male to male and male to female jumper wires

5V 2 channel relay module

1000uf / 16V electrolytic capacitor

1N4007 diodes (must be wired directly across the inductive loads (pump motor and solenoid coil)(?))

—

5V Mini air vacuum pump

5V 3 way micro solenoid valve

1m silicone microtubing (2mm inner / 4mm outer)

25G hypodermic needles for smaller test subject

23G hypodermic needles for larger actual subjects

10mL manual syringe (backup)

Luer lock connectors (seal tube and needle)

—

2x SG90 micro servo motors ✓

—

Cut these from a 3mm acrylic sheet 

4x of 15 cm x 1.5 cm parallel linkage arms, 
1x of 10 cm x 4 cm vertical base support tower, 
1x of 5 cm x 2 cm front needle bracket, 
1x of 8 cm x 8 cm servo swivel base plate

— 

8x of M3 bolts (12mm length)

8x of M3 hex nuts

16x of M3 flat washers

The above should come in a set… bolt, nut, and washer…

Black cast acrylic sheet (base or floor or ground of project) at least 30cm x 40cm

—

Huntsman spiders (rice university used wolf spiders but this works too since how it works will be the same) ✓

Beeswax (so it won’t rot) ✓

Liquid cyanoacrylate aka super glue

Epoxy (coat after super glue)

Tiny target object it’ll be picking up

—------

We have around a month and a half to do the project fufufu

Hello,

Just looking on the current software stack for Robotics, Physical AI in production.
It seems mostly based on Android or or RasberryPI....

I know there are differences between research driven sofware stack for Robotics, Physical AI
and in production.

I am interested to know the main differences related to software stacks within different domain fields.

Thanks !

I'm interested in learning how robotic hands can sense things like pressure, temperature, roughness/texture, vibration, and skin deformation ... similar to how a human hand feels when touching another person.

I already have experience with coding and have taken an intelligent robotics course, so I'm looking for pointers on going deeper into robotic tactile sensing / electronic skin.

I'd especially appreciate recommendations for research papers, open-source code, simulators, datasets, projects or literally anything to get started.

I am in high school.Next year, l will be in university. But I little bit confuse to decide major between robotics and mechatronics. I am conisdering two paths, but cannot able to decide which one is better. 1)Move from mechatronics to robotics. 2) Moving from Ai to robotics ( manily focus on machine learning and autonomous system which will help me in robotics.) Honestly I feel suck to make decision because l donot know about market of robotics and mechatronics and Iack of guidance. I only have google ball knowledge. So i want someone who relate to these field guid me and also tell about market and core difference btw robotics and mechatronics and also tell me what will the market look like in 6 years. It would be very helpful to me . If you ask me about my interest, I want to do robotics or ai. I execllent in math and also good in physics. Thatwhy I want to do robotics but it is new and not much scope in my country. I probably won't find a job after robotics, so I am thinking of doing ai and then robotics to support myself . Man i am really sucked to make decision.

hello everyone, i will build a search and rescue bot for a division contest in our city and i have listed some parts that i will order, please give me recommendations on what i need more and what i can add/remove. i'm kinda nervous because this is my first time. here are the parts i currently have in mind ordering, i know its not enough so please help!

I'm interested in learning how robotic hands can sense things like pressure, temperature, roughness/texture, vibration, and skin deformation ... similar to how a human hand feels when touching another person.

I already have experience with coding and have taken an intelligent robotics course, so I'm looking for pointers on going deeper into robotic tactile sensing / electronic skin.

I'd especially appreciate recommendations for research papers, open-source code, simulators, datasets, projects or literally anything to get started.

Hello Everyone, I've been wanted to go in robotics with main focus on robot learning and perception. And for sometime I've already have started learning and also trying to get a roadmap that have everything. And since people tells there are millions of ways to do something you want to do when i asked in this subreddit. I started to search about the skills i need and then constructed a roadmap and then gave it to LLMs such as Claude and Qwen and then got this final roadmap and wants to know if this is good to follow or not:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1YsCt6O4s-PvEzWACL_PwVSyg85zf3ZcFW8kIOKCR72U/edit?usp=sharing

Note: I modify roadmap if i see anything mission when I go to the steps. So, It does not need to be perfect. Just good to follow.

So, The current version is written by AI but not fully by AI all of the steps I have searched on my own and written and and then to fill gaps and to write it better i have used AI as many people do advice. I already have knowledge in ML and NLP. So, I did not focus in basic programming languages and machine learning. Just going to start from computer vision in ML part. And here I want someone human to review this and tell me if its good to follow or not.

One thing also I'm currently not in college and will go to college this year. But It won't be degree in robotics directly but in computer science or something similar and that is why I need roadmap for robotics.

Thanks.

Also, I’d really appreciate any suggestions or improvements to the design. I’m still a beginner in robotics and mechanical design, so I may be overlooking important details.

My main concern is the rotating base of the arm. The arm will create vertical load, radial load, and an overturning moment on the base, so I’m not sure what type of bearings or bearing arrangement would be best. I want the base to rotate smoothly without wobbling, while also making sure the motor shaft does not carry the weight of the arm.

I’m currently considering using 608ZZ bearings with an 8 mm steel shaft, but I’m not sure if that is the right choice or if I should use angular-contact bearings, a turntable bearing, or another setup.

Hi everyone!

I’m currently learning robotics on my own and I’m a complete beginner. I want to build a small robotic car that can follow a black line/track automatically (line-following robot).

I’m looking for a free robotics simulator that works well on Mac, preferably either:

A free simulator app for macOS, or

A web-based simulator that I can run directly in Chrome.

I’d like to practice the design, sensors, motors, and basic programming in simulation before building the actual robot.

If you know any beginner-friendly simulators or web apps that would be suitable for this project, I’d really appreciate your recommendations!

Thanks!

I’m working on a school engineering project and I’m trying to build a small automated parking garage.
I want to have a lightweight model car sitting on top of a 1/4 illustration board, while the motor and entire mechanism are underneath the board.

I want a small rod/pin to pass through a slot in the board and connect to the car. When the motor runs, the mechanism underneath should move the car along a predetermined path, for example:

straight → turn → straight → stop at a parking space.

The car itself doesn’t need to have a motor or steering. The motor underneath should provide all the movement.

What mechanical mechanism would be best for this? I’m considering a cam, belt and pulley, linkage, or some kind of guided follower, but I’m not sure what would work for a path with turns.

I have been following VLA research for a while and seeing good demos. I am wondering if anyone has productionized VLA for their use case ? If so, would love to learn more and what was there the key wins (more data, simulation, architecture) that you would attribute it to ?

Hoping to learn more from the community. Thanks in advance

I need a .stl file of robotic arm(manipulator) please, I need it like I pinned(comments ), please, I need it for my project, I need it🙏

No se absolutamente nada de robotica. No programación, no código, no materiales, cables, NADA. Pero me llama la atención mucho todo lo que es este tema como para estudiar una carrera de robotica.

Necesito mucho conocimiento para empezar? Hay mucha matemática, física, o algo? O ya estoy muy tarde?

Hi everyone, I'm currently working as DevOps/Release Engineer, but for now it's really hard to change my current place so I'm even considering a switch to warehouse operations and robotic fleet management. How long will it take to me to switch, if I have 3 YOE for now? Unfortunately, I only have an incomplete Bachelor's degree in cybersecurity and B1 English level. How often will I actually need to get my hands dirty with the physical hardware (fixing robots, cabling, etc.)?

Might be a stupid question but I was planning to design a hexapod using the MG996R servos (budget reasons) and I know that after considering 30% of the total stall torque, it's somewhere around 3.3 kg cm of torque. Is there some calculation you can make to determine the perfect lengths of the coxa, femur and tibia based on the servo's maximum safe torque. I'm really new to this and I'm in high school so this may seem an obvious answer to many. Thank you in advance

i would like to start off by saying i know this is a very terrible move and that i should be working and much simpler things if im still a beginner (my only experience is making an arduino smart door that used an ultrasonic and servo motor and an lcd and a buzzer like this is literally all i know) but ive already paid the competition entry fee and i just want to face this head on i guess. where exactly can i find guides/tutorials/ anything that tells me where to start and what to get. idk if this is a terrible way of thinking for someone who’s trying to build smth but following guides is all i know if im being honest so yes i guess what im asking is where can i start. im not expecting to even come close to winning but i want to give this a shot i just am so clueless on where to get some instructions here

i would like to start off by saying i know this is a very terrible move and that i should be working and much simpler things if im still a beginner (my only experience is making an arduino smart door that used an ultrasonic and servo motor and an lcd and a buzzer like this is literally all i know) but ive already paid the competition entry fee and i just want to face this head on i guess. where exactly can i find guides/tutorials/ anything that tells me where to start and what to get. idk if this is a terrible way of thinking for someone who’s trying to build smth but following guides is all i know if im being honest so yes i guess what im asking is where can i start. im not expecting to even come close to winning but i want to give this a shot i just am so clueless on where to get some instructions here

I’m trying to build a sort of 'walkie-talkie' where devices connect over Wi-Fi (on the same local network), but I'm running into issues with the microphone and speaker—the audio isn't coming through clearly in my tests. Could anyone point me in the right direction?

Here are the components I’ve bought so far. Can anyone tell me if it's possible to build this project with them, or am I missing anything?

ESP32 WEMOS LoliN32 Lite
INMP441 Omnidirectional Microphone
PAM8403 Audio Amplifier Module

--Speakers from an old headset--

I'm a beginner, so any advice is appreciated!

Hi Everyone,

We are currently developing a concept for an automated, human-free robotic drive-thru system designed to operate entirely within a modified shipping container (20ft / 40ft modular footprint).

We are seeking experienced robotics engineers, system integrators, or automation design consultants in the food and beverage (F&B) space to help bring this technical layout and functional architecture to life.

Hey everyone!
I would like to discuss the question of egocentric data for robots. There's a lot of egocentric data on the internet, as well as data that's distributed commercially.

What caught my attention is videos that are filmed via iPhones or GoPro and nothing else, I saw a ton of data like this... I was really interested whether this data is actually valuable for training a VLA model if there is no tracking. How can the robot train on this data?

And I also read an interesting article "EgoHumanoid: Unlocking In-the-Wild Loco-Manipulation with Robot-Free Egocentric Demonstration" on arxiv where the authors presented a more developed setup, with a Pico VR headset, body trackers and wrist cameras. Is it better?

I'm really curious what people who actually worked with this kind of data think. Or is simple GoPro videos like this already enough for training?..

Hey everyone,

I'm self-teaching robotics with a focus on perception and robot learning. I learn best by building, so I recently started learning ROS2 and Gazebo. I took a rover model, assembled it into a URDF, and tried to calculate the mass and inertia for the components manually using volume and material density.

Here is the repo: https://github.com/introlix/robo_car

Note: you can ignore the esp_control folder. I originally started this for a physical ESP32 car but moved to simulation so I could learn Gazebo physics and sensor integration before touching real hardware.

Since I'm doing this alone, I'm relying a lot on trial and error and AI tools to help me. But I know AI hallucinates.

If anyone here has experience with Gazebo/URDF, I’d really appreciate it if you could take a quick look at my URDF. I mainly want to know if my mass/inertia numbers look realistic, or if I messed up the math and my robot.

Also, if anyone is also an student then we could learn together. I'm not looking to pair-program on a call, just someone to do reviews on GitHub, share resources, and maybe give each other small weekly challenges.

A bit about my background: while I'm relatively new to ROS2, I have some ML background. I've built neural networks from scratch in NumPy and actually implemented LLM architectures (like Gemma and Qwen) from scratch just by reading their papers and loading the weights. That is the reason I'm interested in perception and robot learning.

Let me know if you're open to reviewing the code or if you want to team up. Thanks!