
Where to start for learning Robotics? - dvkarteek
Hi I am a full stack developer building web application for past 8 years. I want to move to systems programming and eventually work on Robotics. I know the field huge and the scope of the question is too broad. I want to start and eventually figure out what specific field i want to  pursue in Robotics. I have an electronics background so circuits are not new for me. I love programming over mathematical modeling so i am not looking at AI&#x2F;machine learning as of now. I am confused on where to start. As of now i focussed on learning systems programming.
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zeuslawyer
I am the first to admit I don't know much about the field. However, I did
notice this last week, when looking to skill up. Would love to here the jury
out there on whether it's useful? [https://www.udacity.com/course/robotics-
software-engineer--n...](https://www.udacity.com/course/robotics-software-
engineer--nd209)

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9wzYQbTYsAIc
I'm not a roboticist, but have some familiarity with the field. This looks to
be a practical course covering the more important topics in high level
robotics.

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9wzYQbTYsAIc
Start with figuring out whether you want to buy a robot platform and go from
there for learning resources or whether you want to build from the ground up.
If you buy a robot platform, you'll be jumping right into the advanced topics
if you buy the right platform (high degree of freedom humanoid or hexapod). If
you build from the ground up, you can focus more on the lower, system level
and electronic control systems. In either case, once you get to having a
stable robot, you'll be ready for exploring sensing, mapping, pathing, motor
control, and all the other fun stuff.

I'd recommend starting with the good old robotic arm before jumping into
anything like an autonomous vehicle. You'll see different challenges and
functional areas depending on whether you go with ground, underwater, or air
robots. At the same time, you'll see way more practical, industry work based
on the relatively simple arm than you will with what is essentially still in
heavy R&D with vehicles and legged robots. Alternatively, the LEGO robotics
platform has a tremendous community (CMU established C/C++ as a near standard
for the NXT and an open source group has enabled a feature-packed Java
environment for it)

Either way, choose or build a platform that you'd have fun with though, it's
not cheap. If budget is no concern, there's no limit to what you can advance
to (some humanoid platforms start at $20k). On a relatively reasonable budget
(Apple desktop scale), though, you can build or buy some awesomely expressive
(high degree of freedom) hexapods, RC trucks, or very nice polycopters.

Adafruit - best place to start with physical computing and ground-up robotics
[https://learn.adafruit.com/category/robotics](https://learn.adafruit.com/category/robotics)
Sparkfun - another good place to start
[https://www.sparkfun.com](https://www.sparkfun.com)

Math fundamentals for robotics
[https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~me/811/](https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~me/811/)

Robot platforms for sale [https://www.robotshop.com/en/robot-
kits.html](https://www.robotshop.com/en/robot-kits.html)

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9wzYQbTYsAIc
I believe this is supposed to have a title starting with "Ask HN: "

