/sci/ - Science & Math

[Anonymous No.2261843]

How do I get into robotics? I want to build and program robots to do shit for me.

[Anonymous No.2261853]

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=How+do+I+get+into+robotics%3F

[Anonymous No.2261850]

Do you know anything of the subject already?

[Anonymous No.2261856]

move to Japan

Become a giant in the field

[Anonymous No.2261863]

>>2261850
No, but I do have some very limited experience in programming.

>>2261853
Wow man, thanks. With more people like you we wouldn't even need /sci/, we'd just all go on Google. :)

[Anonymous No.2261868]

>>2261856
>implying anyone wouldn't be a giant in Japan

[Anonymous No.2261869]

College hun.

[Krakengineer !!5XY+x7grkpt No.2261878]

you probably want to go into mechatronic engineering.

However be warned they mostly deal with mechanical and control systems. If you want to be writing super AI and other software aspects you want compsci or software engineering.

[Anonymous No.2261879]

>>2261869
>>2261878
OP here, I don't mean as a career, but as a hobby. I already went to college.

[Anonymous No.2261892]

>>2261879
Why would u want to waste ur time building shitty robots?

[Krakengineer !!5XY+x7grkpt No.2261899]

Buy yourself some lego technics or a shitty little kit then. What's the point if you're not serious about it? At least get a hobby that will get you laid.

[Anonymous No.2261901]

Here's how I got into it.
http://www.arduino.cc/

[Anonymous No.2261924]

>>2261899
>have a shitty attitude
>posting on 4chan

I'm not surprised

[Anonymous No.2261990]

>>2261892
>>2261899

Oh /sci/, there's more to life than 4chon.

>>2261901

Arduino is an easy way of getting into programming microcontrollers, I recommend it. I started with PICs, assembly, a homemade serial programmer, and an unhealthy amount of patience. Fuck that shit, jump in, have some fun, learn the details later.

OP, consider an Arduino starter kit from sparkfun.com, or somewhere else. That site can be on the expensive side, but they're a good place to buy from and have tons of reference/tutorials/useful comments and so on. With one of the starter kits you'll have enough parts to play around with and get a grasp on the Arduino's capabilities. If you start to like this stuff, you can then buy/find/build a small robotics platform for it, although you'll need to start collecting tools and parts to build much of anything that's actually interesting.

[Anonymous No.2262270]

Bumping this thread because it's relevant to my interests.

I'm wondering, can you program robots in any language? I have some experience with C++ and I'm taking an introductory compsci course in university as an elective.

[Anonymous No.2262321]

>>2262270
> can you program robots in any language?
Well, sort of. It depends on your robot. You need a way of turning that programming language into something that the chips driving your robot can understand. You could, if you wanted, hook your computer up to your servos and have it control the robot directly. However, that's a pretty costly and inefficient way to make a robot work, especially if you only want it to do simple tasks. More usual is to have a relatively cheap microcontroller on board the robot to do all the processing. This is what Arduino does... it gives you a nice interface to a microcontroller chip, so that you can program in what is essentially C++, easily connect components, and so on. (There are ways to use other programming languages with it, but they require a bit more work.)

[Anonymous No.2262325]

>>2262321

[Anonymous No.2262352]

Arduino seems like a good place for you to start OP. It'll let you get your feet wet without requiring you to spend a whole lot of time learning anything in particular.

If you want to program a robot that does something cool (balance an inverted pendulum, control temperature in some compartment via variable speed fan), you'll want to read about control theory.

If you want to program a robot that can "think", you'll need to read a lot about artificial intelligence.