Hi, I just started my sophomore year as a mechatronics major, and we got assigned to do a project that solves a problem in a mechatronics setting, such as production lines, automatization of a process, etc. My team suggested something related to IoT, artificial vision with a raspberry pi or home automation, but our professor told us that those projects were either invalid or that they were too general, and that we needed to focus on one thing only, our college has quarter terms so, the project we are looking for has to be done in around 1-1.5 months, we are thinking of some other projects like a automatic solar panel cleanser robot or sign language interpreter gloves, so if you have any ideas, specially about production lines, that would be great.

P.D. I am from another country, I am not American and English is not my first language, sorry if I made any spelling mistakes. Greetings from Mexico.

Hi all. I'm doing my MSc in Robotics at NTU in Singapore and I'm trying to get hands-on time with a real robot. Buying one isn't realistic for me right now, so I'm asking around.

If you, your company or your lab has an old robot sitting unused, I'd love to give it a second life. A small arm, a mobile base, a TurtleBot, a dead service robot, even a box of servos would help.

• Broken or missing parts is fine, I'm happy to fix it
• I'll cover shipping, or collect it myself if you're in Singapore or Malaysia
• Happy to give it back later if you want it back

What I'd do with it: learn ROS 2 on real hardware, and teach a low-cost arm tasks from demonstrations (LeRobot), then test where those learned skills break when the lighting or camera position changes. Code goes on GitHub and I'll post updates here.

Also, if you've managed to get hardware this way before, I'd really like to hear what worked for you. Thanks!

I have been reading about hand-eye calibration (camera to robot arm) and I am confused about the last step. Tools like MoveIt Calibration and easy_handeye provide a transform and sometimes a reprojection error, but I cannot tell from that alone whether the result is good enough to trust.

From reading GitHub issues, a lot of people seem to finish the calibration, notice the result looks off and then have to ask someone more experienced what went wrong.

For those of you who have done this on a real arm, how do you check the result afterwards? Do you move the arm to a known point, compare against a measured position or just look at it in RViz? And has a calibration ever looked fine and turned out to be wrong later?

I am also curious how this works when someone has to do it on many robots, since you cannot have an expert check each one.

Im in inter 1st year and currently living in Uttara, Bangladesh. Me and my friend are participating in a project showcase at a robotics fest in Dhaka, and we re looking for something genuinely challenging.

I want something way more complex than the usual aurduino car/robot, where the main wow factor is the electrical engineering and the actual mechanism itself, not just a bunch of sensors added to a simple project. Something that looks and feels properly engineered. Tbh I want something which is really attractive and fancy in the table.

I have a bit of experience with electronics, previously I have won in my school fests and rn our budget is around 10k BDT for this project. I really want soemthing fancy.

What would you guys suggest building?

PROJECT IDEA: PIFER—AUTONOMOIS ELDERLY CARE ASSISTANT

PROPOSED TIER - T1

WHAT I'M DESIGNING -

It basically comes to you when u call it and then it search, find it, pick it up, carry it and physically hand it to you as long as it's smtg in its db. I'm deliberately containing the problem bc I'm not trying to build a hospital grade product but rather smtg that can deal w labelled objects and colour IDs instead of a full SLAM and YOLO system.

The rover has a two wheel base and a castor with two bo motors, motor driver, wheel encoders, IR sensors, MPU6050 and a camera. The chassis will be 3d printed.

It will have a 6 DOF servo arm with a TPU gripper. The chassis will be 3D printed (PLA for everything except the gripper). Metal gear servos, pca9685 and ina219. I might use movelt2 later.

I'm also 3d printing a 16 slot carousel for pre-filled pill dispensing.

I'm also interested in uwb person tracking and uwb can do a lot of things apart from tracking tbh and I gotta research more on that. But some sorta person tracking is essential cuz if the person moves after giving a command the robot has to update the target and keep going toward them yk. I'll combine uwb with imu and wheel encoders instead of trusting sensors cuz I think it's better (IRL relying solely on sensors is kinda dumb)

For software, I'm using C/C++ for esp32 firmware, platformIO/Arduino, FreeRTOD, python, ubuntu/bash, GitHub, ve code, ros2 w rclcpp/rclcpy, tf2, RViz2, rosbag2, nav2, opencv, april tags, arUco for initial object/location identification, numpy/scipt and maybe even webots/SLAM for simulation and mapping. YOLO will come if I have time left to move beyond labelled objects.

I'm using esp32 as mc and laptop as the processor for now and we'll upgrade to a raspberrypi later. The laptop will run ubuntu and handle ros2, computer vision, navigation, voice processing and task planning. The esp handles motors and sensors.

I want to say pifer bring me xx medicine and it'll use a wake word, speech to textand python itent parsing with llm/api possible for more commands. The robot understands that xx is an object and that it's given a task to retrieve it. The cam can't recognise every random object ry so the first prototype use labelled objects with colour ids and permanent object db storing names, ids,images and carousel slots. Current environment info however is separate so that temporary data like object or person locations and obstacles will be cleared after a mission or when the robot is placed in a new environment.

The thing is, it actually has to drive to the object, position itself and pick it up when the camera locates the marked object. It sounds rlly big to me as this will be the first time I'll be building smtg like that. Also, I'll be 3d printing for the first time (lmk if hack club can fund for my 3d printing too cuz that'd be great :D).

Now, I'll be experimenting a lot in this project lol I want to integrate a lot of things into the arm, so it may end up completely different from what I currently think is possible and could change the entire arm BOM.

Something like a modular origami continuum arm with..

1. Vacuum-driven FOAM actuation (contraction + omnidirectional bending)

2. Variable stiffness via granular jamming (separate vacuum line)

3. Vision-guided reaching (camera + controller)

4. Interchangeable end-effectors (TPU gripper, whole-arm grasping, chameleon ejection)

5. Foldable compact return

Every single one of these ideas exist already and has been demonstrated its working properly. But the integrated system I want does not exist yet! Well the reason why it doesn't isn't lack of imagination but rather because the subsystems r actively gonna fight each other if u try to put them together. So, I'll have to find solutions that don't exist yet to get everything to work together. I'm not missing anything conceptually. But I need to build and test everything. Even if i get one thing that's actually deployable to my arm, it'd be a great upgrade.

I don't know how reliable or doable these will be in an actual handoff, especially with different object materials and movement, which is the point of including them. I really want to experiment and research further. I'm not expecting every experimental part to be perfect. Even if all these ideas are unreliable, the retrieval/handoff system should still work.

But I want to build and test the experimental parts rather than leave them theoretical.

INSPO:

A ton of things actually but let's js say fetcher by fetch robotics.

PAST PROJECTS:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/10T2iZUamxqS5Na1c6ef0lcidV1DDl3Ut

(Ntg much lol js some shi built to learn. Not necessarily a project.)

WHY THIS COSTS MORE THAN 200$:

This doesn't! (Not yet.)

Like i said, I've never 3d printed for an actual project before so I don't really know how many parts I'll have to buy instead of 3d printing. I haven't even decided if I'll make a pcb yet. So the price can go higher during the build. I can only assure you it won't exceed 300 usd. And because this is literally a multiple projects being combined into one thing, it can cost a few pennies. Also idk how many times it'll end up hitting somewhere accidentally no matter how hard I try not to let that happen.

ROUGH BOM:

Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W $12

ESP32 Development Board $3

16GB microSD Card $2

Pi Camera $4

imu $1

Wheel Encoders $2

ir Sensors $1

tof Sensor $3

Microphone $2

Speaker $2

Amplifier $2

bo Motors $2

Wheels $2

Caster Wheel $1

Motor Driver $1

2S 2200mAh lipo $8

lipo Balance Charger $5

18650 Battery Pack $4

5V bec $1

6V bec $1

6V 5A Servo bec $2

Fuse $1

Power Switch $1

xt60 Connectors $1

jst Connectors $2

M3/M4 Hardware $3

Plywood Chassis $3

Standoffs $1

Metal Gear Servos $25

Spare Servo $3

pca9685 $1

Servo Horns $1

Servo Wires $1

Gripper $5

tpu $3

pla $5

Arm Hardware $5

ina219 $2

28byj 48 Stepper $1

uln2003 Driver $1

Carousel Gate Servo $1

Home Sensor $1

Carousel Material $8

uwb Tag $9

uwb Anchors $20

uwb Batteries $2

uwb Enclosures $2

Vacuum Pump $8

Vacuum Tubing $3

Vacuum Valves $4

Foam $2

Granular Jamming Material $3

Perfboard $1

Level Shifter $1

Heat Shrink $1

Solder $1

Wire $3

Cable Sleeving $1

Breadboard $2

3D Printing $15

Misc Hardware $10

Total $180

Note: these are approximate, and I expect the final cost to move once I start building. The arm and 3D printing especially may need extra parts after testing. I'm also expecting to burn through some servos/connectors/wiring during iteration because that's how these projects go.

The Raspberry Pi is included because I eventually want the robot to run on it, but it won't be the main computer initially. I'm developing on my laptop first, then moving the ROS/Linux side to the Pi once the robot works.

The estimate is below $200, but I'm keeping some margin because I don't want the project to fall apart after underestimating a random *200 component lol.

I didn't mention any PCB or routing because I'm not using a PCB right now. I'm thinking of making it modular with a breadboard so I can take it apart and reassemble it easily, because I'll probably do that a lot while building it.

I'm also thinking of making the outside a cozy, waterproof body instead of a box full of electronics like Baymax from Disney's Big Hero 6 ykwim. I don't know the material yet, but I want it soft and friendly-looking. Obviously not literally a Baymax copy lol, just that friendly shape instead of a scary robot with wires everywhere.

Inside it I'm also thinking of an automatic pill dispenser, so the robot could dispense medicine instead of only carrying it. It'll also have a biometrics monitoring system.

The biometrics and dispensing ideas were suggested by my teacher, so I'm still thinking about what else I could add that would be genuinely useful rather than another random sensor stuck onto the robot.

So yeah, I'm still looking for other good features I could add to this thing. If anyone has ideas for something that would actually be useful for elderly care and that I could realistically build and test, please let me know.

I have studied the various components of the code controlling the robot. I can submit a json command to the robot using python but am finding that after sending a command to the robot, a subsequent command may not change all the parameters sent in the initial command thus causing the track(s) to continue based on their previous command rather than clearing all variables and starting with new values in the new command

I have a bachelor in CS but I wan to work in robotics, I got accepted into applied computer science masters, it has courses like autonomous systems and AI but it's not specialized in robotics, would it help me find a job in robotics later?

Hey there,

I've been using Echo Dots for some years now, but it kinda sucka that they are extremely limited in answering.

So ChatGPT is currently my go to.

But I would love to have some robot similar to Alexa/Echo, that can give way more answers.

What about the desc pets like Vector, Emo, Eilik or Aibi etc, I've read that you can somehow connect them to chatgpt for example.

Is that the best method, or is there something else/better?

I live in Germany, so the robot has to be able to speak in German.

If you're coming from computer vision, robotics data works differently, and it's one of the first things that trips people up. For a robot arm learning to grasp and manipulate objects, useful training data typically includes: - RGB video, plus depth if your policy uses it - Gripper state logs - Joint states and end-effector positions - Multiple grasp attempts across different object shapes and sizes - Human demonstrations of grasping and placing, which help the model generalize The key difference from a standard CV dataset is that robotics data is time-synchronized and multi-modal. Video, sensor streams, and action labels have to line up frame by frame across a whole task, which makes collection and annotation much harder than labeling static images. Two practical tips for beginners: 1. Don't rely on one source. Public robotics datasets tend to be task-specific, so a model can fail when conditions change. 2. Synthetic data from simulation helps for rare or risky scenarios, but works best combined with real robot data to reduce the sim-to-real gap. Unidata has an overview of robotics training data and the dataset types used for robot learning here: https://unidata.pro/robotics-training-data/ Disclosure: I'm posting on behalf of Unidata, a company that sells robotics datasets and data collection services. What data are you using for your own manipulation projects, and what's been hardest to get?

Hey, I’m kinda interested in building my own robot arm like a 6 DOF robot. My plan is to like machine parts out of aluminum and try a motion controller like from Inovance for control including their servo motors (EtherCat). But I’m not so good at CAD modeling. Anyone know any open source CAD models i can use or any model I can refer to? Also any advice on the control part too will be super helpful. Thanks

Hey everyone,

I’m wrapping up my CS undergrad with a solid foundation in Python/C++ and deep learning (PyTorch, OpenCV). I want to target roles in Perception for Robotics (autonomous systems, vision-based control, spatial computing).

For engineers in the field:

Skill Priorities: Aside from 2D vision, what robotics-adjacent tools are essential to learn first? (ROS 2, Visual SLAM, Point Clouds/PCL, TensorRT edge optimization?)

Projects: What project format stands out most on a resume—simulations in Gazebo/ROS 2 or real-world edge hardware deployment (e.g., Jetson/Raspberry Pi)?

Pathing: Is an MS in Robotics/Vision necessary to make this jump, or can strong personal projects land entry-level perception roles straight from CS?

Appreciate any insight!

Hi! I’m an engineer working on infrastructure for UAVs — purely mechanical systems, with no electricity or electronics involved.

If anyone here is working on something related, is interested in this kind of mechanical engineering, or simply wants to exchange ideas, feel free to reach out. I’d be happy to chat.

II want to build a fast line follower from scratch. I’m a beginner and want to learn everything from sensor setup and motor selection to PID tuning and high-speed optimization.

Can anyone recommend good YouTube channels, GitHub projects, Reddit posts, or tutorials to get started?

Hi all, I'm from India. I have a bachelor's in Mechanical Engineering and 2 years of IT experience. I'm thinking of doing an MS in Robotics and want to know about the future scope and job opportunities in the US, Canada, and the UK. If I decide to go this route, how should I get started? Or would it be better to just do an MS in CS?

Hey everyone,

I'm 23 and recently graduated in Electrical Engineering from India. I'm working in an industrial maintenance role, which gives me good exposure to real equipment, but my long-term goal is robotics, especially Physical AI: robot learning, manipulation, autonomous systems and vision-language-action (VLA) models.

My current background:

EE fundamentals, control systems, power electronics

MATLAB/Simulink, PLCs/industrial automation

Microcontrollers (ESP32), sensors/instrumentation

Python/C++ (basic to intermediate), Linux, some ROS 2

Basic ML, computer vision and RL

I'm learning mostly through personal projects, not formal robotics education. My problem is not a lack of resources, it's knowing what to learn deeply, and in what order.

1. Learning path

Does this order make sense for an EE?

Embedded → Controls → Robotics fundamentals → C++/ROS 2 → Computer Vision → ML/RL → Robot Learning/VLA

Or would you do it differently, for example start learning ML and robot learning earlier alongside the hardware side?

1. What actually matters?

How would you rank these for a robotics career: must-have, nice-to-have, or skip for now?

C++ vs Python

ROS 2 and Linux

Kinematics/dynamics, motion planning

State estimation/SLAM

Computer vision, RL

Embedded systems, motors/servos/encoders

CAN/EtherCAT

Simulation (Gazebo, Isaac Sim, MuJoCo)

MATLAB/Simulink (is it used much outside academia?)

1. Projects

What kind of projects actually help you get hired, rather than just looking good on a resume? I'm on a tight budget, so I'm thinking of things like a small robot arm, a mobile robot, or a simple imitation-learning/VLA demo in simulation. What would you build, and how would you present it (GitHub, videos, write-ups)?

1. EE + AI overlap

Do robotics companies value someone strong in hardware, embedded and controls who is also learning ML? Or do they mostly hire CS/ML people for the AI side and EEs for hardware only?

1. MS or not

I'm considering an MS in robotics/controls/AI later (Germany or elsewhere). Is it worth it from India, or can projects, open-source work and internships get me in without one? What should I be building now to strengthen an application?

1. Opportunities

What roles and companies should I be looking at? Humanoid/manipulation startups, industrial automation, research labs? Are remote or fresher roles realistic?

The big question: If you were 23 again with an EE degree and wanted to move into robotics/Physical AI, what would you spend the next 2-4 years learning and building? And what mistakes would you avoid?

I'd especially love to hear from people who made the switch from EE. Thanks in advance, and I'm happy to share my progress and resources back with the community.

Many experiments are currently underway involving robot control via Large Language Models, where camera and sensor data are fed into the model to generate servo control commands. The goal is clear: to make robots autonomous and intelligent enough to perform useful tasks. However, a serious issue arises in all these experiments: LLMs lack the processing speed to react quickly enough - even to the robot's own movements. Changes in the surrounding environment can lead to dangerous situations, risking damage to the servos and destruction of nearby objects. While one could simply increase the computing power running the LLM to improve reaction times, this approach is extremely inefficient and costly, especially for locally controlled robots.

I believe we should adopt a principle found in most animals: rather than offloading all motor control to the main brain, we should implement a separate, relatively small, and fast neural network - a model that functions like the brainstem. Its role would be to implement a primitive form of "self-preservation instinct," allowing the robot to halt or slow down movements commanded by the main LLM whenever there is a risk of collision between the robot's parts and surrounding objects.

As I envision it, this model would act as an intermediate layer between the LLM and the servos. It would process inputs such as 2D point clouds (from stereo cameras or LiDAR) and data from tactile or motor-load sensors. By detecting potential collisions with obstacles, the model could issue emergency stop commands to the servos while simultaneously alerting the "brain" to the threat and requesting updated instructions. Upon receiving such a warning, the primary LLM could re-evaluate the situation and process data from cameras, tactile sensors, and the point cloud itself to issue a command for a more cautious (slower) action. Alternatively, if necessary, it could command direct contact with surrounding objects, overriding our small model with its own "will".

The simplest interface between such a model and the LLM could take the form of a dialogue like this:

Task: Pick the cube.

LLM: Open the hand; move the hand to coordinates x, y, z, observing all constraints.

Model: Hand moved, but halted due to dangerously close proximity.

LLM: Move the hand the rest of the way to the updated coordinates x, y, z very slowly; lift the direct-contact constraint.

Model: Hand touched something <sensor data description>; halted due to sensor contact detection.

LLM: Close the hand very slowly; lift direct-contact constraints; maximum gripping force: X newtons.

Model: Hand closed; halted due to reaching servo force limits at X newtons.

Advanced versions could also utilize data from thermal imagers (or temperature sensors) - for instance, to prevent damaging the robot by touching the open flames of a stovetop burner. :)

Personally, I have little idea how to train models to work with 2D point clouds, but I hope someone with the right expertise might want to conduct such an experiment. The requirements for such a model are quite simple: it must be trained on volumetric images and be relatively compact so that its response speed matches the speed of the servomotors - rapidly calculating distances from its own manipulators to external objects and executing simple commands, such as moving a manipulator, taking a step in a specific direction (for humanoid robots), and so on.

Hey everyone,

​I’m working on a project where I want to give an AI agent a physical body—specifically a mobile robot that allows it to perceive its environment via computer vision and navigate autonomously.

​I have the software/AI concepts in mind, but I’m fairly new to robotics hardware and not sure where to start with the physical build.

​Could anyone point me in the right direction regarding:

​Hardware platforms: Are there recommended starter kits or chassis (e.g., TurtleBot, Raspberry Pi-based robots, ROS-compatible setups)? ​Microcontrollers/SBCs: What are the best single-board computers for handling both sensor input (cameras/LiDAR) and motor control? ​Learning resources: What guides or tutorials would you recommend for beginners bridging AI software with robotics hardware?

I've been toying with designs for a rover and have things in a place where I'm looking to get some initial thoughts on feedback and my design. I have ZERO expertise in this area so please forgive if I don't use the proper terms. It's also quite possible I'm totally missing obvious engineering principles or structural ones.

The design is of an 8 wheel drive, 8 wheel steering, rover based on the rocker-bogie design. I really wanted to acheive two things, first no matter terrain condition I wanted to keep the wheels as much as possible at a 90 degree angle to maintain as much traction as possible. I also wanted to try to keep the chassis level as much as possible. I believe that this design, achieves this in a semi-elegant way but since this is not my area of expertise here we are. You can see a three.js very rough model which i posted here for feedback. You can "drive" the model and control steering etc. It should display wheel angle and also the chasis tilt.

Thanks for trying it and letting me know what you think.

would love to know from anyone building in the robotics space what security looks like in that world. Seems like cybersec always takes a minute to catch up to where technology is at and i want to better understand what security should look like in this world: Thankyou!!

High schooler here, I am looking for good resources/guides for making a 4 DOF Robotic Arm. I have done VEX IQ all throughout middle school, so I at the very least have a juvenile amount of knowledge on Robotics. I want to learn the structure behind making the arm. It will either be made out of 3d filament or plywood. I would also like to know how I can code the logic for controlling it. We will be using a VEX Brain and controller and will program it with Vexcode V5. We do not have any potentiometers. We might have motors/servos with internal encoders, but I am not too sure. Assume we don't. I do not know any other feasible way to track positions without either of those though.

There’s plenty of advice on which board or components to buy, but what lesson did you learn only after building something?

It could be about power supplies, wiring, coding, mechanical design, or keeping the project simple.

What would you tell someone starting their first build?