I'm a JavaScript engineer. How can I get into Robotics?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9964970

by jiert • 11 years ago

11 25 11 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

I'm growing a bit tired of making browsers do things, and think it would be fun to make robots do things. I've messed around with Arduino, but nothing beyond that. Where should I start?

mattkrea• 11 years ago

Pick a framework and order some devices / components. I was attempting to get into this but never got beyond toying around with GPIO on the Beaglebone. You just have to start getting the equipment and dive into it.

jiert8• 11 years ago

Thanks. Yeah I bought an Arduino and some parts, but never got past the first bug robot build.

I'm also wondering where people interested in this stuff gather, and where some of the better tutorials / blogs / books are.

You're right though, I need to just start putting parts together.

Qworg3• 11 years ago

Do you want to do it as a career or just to play with?

jiert8• 11 years ago

I'd like to play with it at first but with the goal of someday making it a career.

Qworg3• 11 years ago

I'd take Thrun's course on autonomous robots.

I'd then implement it on a physical system - I'd focus on something other than Arduino, which doesn't translate well, and do it on RaspPi or similar.

Qworg3• 11 years ago

Also, folks are right RE: languages - you'll need to pick up C/C++ as well, and likely a little Python/alternative scripting language.

thomasrossi• 11 years ago

Robotics with capital R comes with mechanics, algebra and control theory, my flatmate was building robots. They are super expensive though. I think an arrival point to go to "career" could be to stabilize a body standing still on top of a sphere or over two wheels.

jiert8• 11 years ago

Yeah, the level of math required is a concern career-wise.

atroyn2• 11 years ago

If you want to get serious/make a career of it, there's no getting around the math. Even an embedded controls engineer needs to understand signals and timing.

CindyPtn• 11 years ago

Another good place to start would be OpenCV, a library for computer vision. It'll come in handy if you wish to build robots that are aware of their environment.

bfrog• 11 years ago

What you do really depends on what focus area you want to start diving in to. Try making a simple drone fly around for awhile automatically, you will learn all sorts of nifty things about control theory, mechanical models, digital signal processing, machine learning, telemetry and more.

Robotics as a field is quite large. There's all sorts of Robotics out there really.

JavaScript probably isn't the language of choice for Robotics though... C/C++ most definitely are a lot more widely used considering you want low latency with hard time limit control loops. Imagine if your robotics software suddenly decided it needed to garbage collect or JIT some code when it should've been making a decision to avoid collisions...

jiert8• 11 years ago

Thanks for the advice. Do you have any suggestions on a drone platform that would be good for a beginner?

I notice that the first thing that pops up on google for 'programming drones' is http://www.nodecopter.com/ which seems right up my alley, but I think you have a good point about learning C/C++

johnmw• 11 years ago

Have you seen http://nodebots.io ? Might be a good place to start for a JS engineer.

jiert8• 11 years ago

Cool, thanks!

mdonahoe• 11 years ago

How about doing web stuff at a robotics company?

jiert8• 11 years ago

A very good idea. I mean, that's probably the best way to get a foot in the door.

nso95• 11 years ago

LEGO Mindstorms

jiert8• 11 years ago

Solid. This is would also allow me to spend time teaching programming to my son as he gets older.

touristtam• 11 years ago

Or arduino? There are project based around NodeJS to communicate with arduino board (see https://github.com/voodootikigod/node-serialport)

forkLding• 11 years ago

Try tessel.io, although you're going to have to know some node.Js basics

atroyn2• 11 years ago

Do you have a CS or other engineering degree? I'm going back for my masters in Robotics after 5 years in making browsers do things.

fagunb• 11 years ago

I am wondering why no body mentioned Espruino - http://www.espruino.com/ - do check it out

thethinker1032• 11 years ago

This may be what you are looking for: http://cylonjs.com/

It's a javascript framework for robotics.

lostdog• 11 years ago

Lots of drone companies need frontend engineers. Check out their job postings.

Here's an example: https://boards.greenhouse.io/kespryinc/jobs/50151

jiert8• 11 years ago

I appreciate everyone's comments, thanks!!

I'm a JavaScript engineer. How can I get into Robotics?

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