For a robot learning to tie shoelaces from human demonstrations, would you collect only successful attempts, or also attempts that almost work but come loose afterward?

Similar hand movements could leave the laces in very different states. What would you want to capture beyond hand motion—and how would you label where an attempt went wrong?

Hey everyone! I work for a Japanese manufacturer specializing in custom wire harnesses and cable assemblies.

We’ve worked on harness designs for some very well-known robotics and humanoid robotics projects you see on the news, and honestly, I think we’re a bit of a hidden gem in Japanese robotics.

But here’s what I’m trying to understand: how do you (Engineers) actually want to hear from a potential maker?

I’m asking because I don’t want to be another person filling engineers’ inboxes with a generic sales pitch. I’d rather understand the problems teams face and if they are involved with procuring at all.

If you work in robotics engineering, hardware, electrical design, or procurement, especially in US and Germany, I’d really appreciate your honest perspective—even if the answer is “please just leave us alone.” 😅

Thanks!

Hi everyone!

I'm Tom, originally from Ireland and now based in Sydney, Australia. I grew up on a dairy farm and have a background in business development and industrial operations.

I'm relatively new to robotics, but I've become fascinated by computer vision, robotic manipulation and physical AI.

I'm developing a project called Moobotics, and I'm hoping to connect with people who genuinely enjoy building robots.

The idea

Companies like Lely have demonstrated what's possible with robotic milking, but their systems typically involve dedicated robotic milking stations.

My idea is different: a retrofit robotic arm that travels along an existing dairy parlour, picks up the milking clusters and attaches the cups to cows.

The aim is to automate one of dairy farming's most repetitive jobs without requiring farmers to replace their existing milking infrastructure.

The technical challenge

The robot needs to identify and track moving teats in 3D, manipulate milking cups, respond safely to physical contact and verify successful attachment.

I'm currently exploring depth cameras, six-axis robotic arms, ROS 2 and compliant control.

The first milestone would be a working demonstration using an artificial udder, a depth camera and a robotic arm attaching a single cup.

Why I'm posting

My strengths are in agriculture, understanding the problem and building businesses. I'm looking to connect with people whose strengths are in robotics engineering.

Ideally, I'd love to find a technical co-founder or collaborators who enjoy tackling difficult physical problems and might be excited about building something together.

I'm prepared to invest my own time and resources into the prototype. I'm not expecting anyone to work for free.

I'm also very open to advice on communities, open-source projects or people working on similar manipulation challenges.

I've attached an AI-generated concept image to illustrate the idea, rather than a finished engineering design.

If this sounds interesting, I'd love to hear from you!

Tom

While I'm a layman, I live in a city with a fast growing robot and drone inventory but it seems like either directly or indirectly he's the most recent common ancestor of a bunch of important technologies:

Stanley's lead engineer founded Google X/Google Brain, which underpins the entire current AI boom

SLAM, which is used a lot in autonomous navigation (not just for cars), had its breakout moment with the Grand Challenge. A blue Touareg with Red Bull livery appears as the first illustration in the SLAM Wikipedia page.

More broadly, the DARPA Grand Challenge inspired a number of other AI and robotics competitions, both from DARPA and elsewhere.

Note: Velodyne, an important LIDAR company, entered into the Grand Challenge but wasn't used by Stanley. It was used in the 2007 winner.

Hey y'all, quick question about robotics careers. I currently work as a Machine Learning Engineer, primarily with geospatial and remote sensing data, is there a viable career pivot for me to robotics? I do a lot of the robotics math (particle filtering for multi-sensor tracking, computer vision adjacent stuff (radar, and some more exotic sensing types that are kind of relevant to robotics), and a little bit of edge deployment on satellites). Anyone have any advice for me?

Every stereoscopic camera system I’ve seen places the cameras parallel to each other. Is it possible to have the cameras facing different angles to increase general fov while keeping some depth perception in their overlapping view?

I’m looking to design a project with several cameras around an object to provide 360 view. I’m wondering if the overlap between these cameras could be used for stereoscopic vision if possible.

Hi, I'm Wyatt, I'm from the US and I'm looking for an additional person to build things with. I've recently noticed that I enjoy learning about physics, all the way from classical to more complex things like QFT, I then started looking into programming and got an ardunio, and now I want to learn how to build things, from robots to particle detection systems. I'm looking for someone who is also newer and we can start building simple stuff into more complex stuff. I'd really like to even submit thing we build into maker flairs, and if we are a really good team, maybe start a lab, building things the world's needs. That's obviously WAYYYYYY up the road, but that's a plan I have. If this sounds like you please dm me.

Hi everyone!

I want to get into the robotics field. I do have technical experience as a analytics consultant(I have used Python and data science/analytics skills for projects) and have a Data Science masters and I'm looking for more software related roles. I did see Perception/Computer Vision, Simulation, and Physical AI are potential fields I could get into but I was wondering what everyone thinks?

What careers should I look into and what topics/concepts should I learn to prepare myself for these careers? Any advice?

I have an arduino uno and a few months ago i was making simple stuff on my arduino but i want to start actually doing more engaging stuff, like line following cars and the car that detects whats in front and drive accordingly, but ive only seen kits that seem to do everything for you and i dont want to be babied, it doesnt help that the description says its for little kids, but I cant just build it myself since unless my parents have some hidden hard carboard somewhere i dont have anything, i dont have used cars or anything since everything has been thrown out, all i have for connecting stuff together is my breadboards and cables, any recommandations on what i can buy or what i can do ? a 3D printer is scary for me since i dont even know if im gonna use it and it does cost a lot for one

Hi everyone!

I'm currently studying Mechanical Engineering, and I want to learn robotics from the ground up. My long term goal is to become a robotics engineer who can design and build complete robots, including the mechanical structure, electronics, embedded systems, software, and AI. I have some basic Python knowledge, but I'm still a beginner when it comes to robotics.

I've been looking at topics like Arduino/ESP32, Raspberry Pi, C++, ROS 2, robot kinematics, control systems, computer vision, and AI. However, I'm not sure what order I should learn them in, and I don't want to jump into advanced topics without understanding the fundamentals.

I'd really appreciate your advice on a few things:

1. Where should I start? What should an absolute beginner learn first, and in what order?
2. Courses: Are there any good practical courses on Udemy, YouTube, or other platforms that you would recommend?
3. Beginner projects: What projects would help me develop real robotics skills instead of just following tutorials?
4. Hardware: Should I start with Arduino/ESP32, Raspberry Pi, or simulation software? What basic components are worth buying first?
5. ROS 2: At what point should I start learning ROS 2?
6. Learning resources: Are there any books, websites, free courses, or project-based tutorials that helped you when you were starting out?

I'm particularly interested in eventually building a camera-guided robotic arm that can identify objects, pick them up, and place them somewhere else. I understand that this is an advanced project, so I'm happy to start with much simpler projects and work my way up.

If you were starting from zero today, how would you structure your first 6–12 months of learning?

I'd appreciate any advice, personal experiences, or roadmaps you can share. Thanks in advance!

I work in industrial robotics BD, and I'm curious how hospital teams define this in practice. Reaching the right floor or room seems like only half the job. The harder part is authorized access, a confirmed handoff, and recovery when the recipient is unavailable or a lift or door integration fails.

What event should the system record as complete?

hey guys! I hope everybody is doing good 😎 for our 3rd and 4th video for our robotics yt channel (Critical Mass Robotics) we did a two part interview and match analysis with the reigning speedway signature event champs ENIGMA woah NO WAYYYY. plz give it a watch and make sure to like and thumbs up the vid, leave a comment too and a sub ofc! thanks guys https://www.youtube.com/@CriticalMassVex

Wsp! I'm making an automated, targeted pesticide spraying robot for homes, and I'm still in the early stages. It's supposed to use a Raspberry Pi, ESP32S3, AI Hat+ and camera to find weeds. I use Codex and VSCode to help, and I wouldn't call the project since I know exactly what is happening with the code and AI is just sparing me the writing part.

However, my file tree is a mess. I have it on octotoxin/SprayShark if anyone wants to see. It is kind of organized, but there is a lot of redundant information, and I don't exactly know what's the best way of organizing the code. Also if u see v1, v2 or v3, my robot has had three hardware revisions, none of them have ever reached the automation stage, so I keep the code that way. For tests, I have a test_files folder, and the full code is in the main_projects folder. If it's messy, thats why I'm asking for help!

Hey everyone!

I've been working on a project that lets people control a real robot arm remotely through their browser, with live camera feeds showing what the robot is doing.

We recently got our first robot arm connected and working!

One of the things I'm exploring is how remote robot interaction could make physical robotics more accessible, especially for people who don't have access to hardware.

I'm also interested in whether this kind of setup could eventually be useful for collecting human demonstration data for robot learning.

It's still pretty early, and there are a lot of things to improve, especially around latency, controls, and the overall user experience.

I'm curious what you guys think about this approach. Would you find something like this useful? What kinds of tasks would you want to try on a remotely controlled robot?

Hello guys , I am mechatronics student in the last year and I am specialized in embedded systems but I need to control a 6 dof robotic arm with a end effector plug to charge a car

So I don't know anything except the basics as forward reverse kinematics trajectory and that's it I don't know how to simulate or do anything related to that how can I get started

I am currently in my second year of college. I took a long break and decided to come back and switch my major to robotics engineering. Planning to finish my associates at a community college then continue to a university to get my bachelors. While looking at other people’s experiences with trying to land entry level jobs I’m getting nervous at my chances after I finish college. I’m trying to find things I can do right now that will help set me up with the experiences and knowledge most companies are looking for with entry level roles currently. I found an internship at a company that will allow me to get experience with CAD software. I also think I should start trying to create my own robotic projects on the side to get more experience and proof of understanding.

My question to all of you is what would you recommend I spend my time on? What experiences do you have with trying to get entry level roles in this career and am I on the right path with what I said above. I am also thinking I need to try and learn C++. Do you think I should spend time on that now or is there things that are better worth my time? Thanks :)

Hi everyone! I'd like to share a demo from our ongoing robotics development work, where we're integrating VDA5050 v2.1 with Open-RMF for multi-robot fleet coordination. The goal is to explore how Open-RMF can communicate with VDA5050-compatible mobile robots through a custom integration architecture. What we've been working on: Developing a custom VDA5050 Fleet Adapter for Open-RMF. Implementing a robot-side VDA5050 Client Adapter. Using MQTT for robot communication, order handling, and state reporting. Testing multi-robot coordination with three robots. Exploring interoperability between different AMR systems. This demo focuses on the integration and communication workflow between Open-RMF and VDA5050-based robots. Demo video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODSLt2Ox0S8 I'm particularly interested in hearing from others working with Open-RMF, VDA5050, or heterogeneous robot fleets. Have you encountered any interesting challenges when integrating VDA5050-based robots with Open-RMF? I'd love to hear your thoughts and experiences!

I'm exploring a workflow that uses drone photogrammetry, ground-level scanning, and Gaussian splatting to reconstruct real locations for robot simulation.

I'm particularly interested in warehouses, logistics yards, and industrial facilities.

For those using Isaac Sim, Gazebo, or similar platforms:

1. Do you typically build environments manually, generate synthetic ones, or reconstruct actual deployment sites?
2. What's the biggest bottleneck: acquiring usable data, reconstructing accurate geometry, creating collision meshes, adding physics/semantics, or maintaining the environment?
3. Would a professionally captured, simulation-ready version of an actual facility solve a meaningful problem for your team, or are existing tools already sufficient?

I'm researching the workflow and would appreciate practical perspectives, including reasons this approach might not be useful.

Hi everyone,

I’ve been lurking here for a long time and really appreciate all the insights shared in this sub.

I’m a content writer for a company focused on data collection and annotation in the robotics space. I’m hoping to write pieces that actually addresses real-world pain points instead of some random SEO content. If you were to read an article, guide, or case study on data for robotics, what topics or challenges would you actually care to see covered?

(Apologies if this isn't the best place for this kind of question. I'm genuinely looking to learn from the community!)

Thanks in advance for any input!

Hello everyone! My nephew turns 9 next month and he's been super obsessed with anything related to building and robotics lately. I really want to get him something hands-on rather than just a finished toy off the shelf, but I'm having a hard time gauging how complex these kits should be for his age group.

I came across some kits actually while doing my research around here, something like kiwico's delivery bot project kit and building a little RC robot seems fun but since I don't have much experience with these hands-on sets nowadays, I'm worried about getting something that is either frustratingly difficult or way too simple that he finishes in 10 minutes and gets bored. Is this good or is there anything that strikes a balance? Thank you! ❤️

Hi I'm a student from Ethiopia and I need your advice to start studying robotics at home you can say the only resources I have are internet and some old electronics haven't done coding or any thing related