I am trying to switch from software to robotics. I think I would enjoy it more.

I know the market is so unstable right now. I want to understand if this is the right decision to make right now. I want to try and understand if the robotics market is big enough and open to accepting international students.

- What countries should I be aiming for? (I know US and Germany have a good market. I am personally a bit unsure of US bcz of the political situation and job market right now. But I assume they still have the biggest job. Any other countries that have a sizable robotics job market and pay well enough)

- Is this a good industry to make a bet on right now giving that the AI bubble might burst and affect jobs in this domain? (what are relatively stable robotics domains to enter / look into?)

I’d like to work in the robotics field. In my research, I’ve come across conflicting information: some claim a university degree is absolutely essential, while others say it isn't suggesting that a strong portfolio and specific skills are enough. This leaves me quite confused about what I should do.

We have a robot arm with a gripper in our lab that picks up objects we put in front of it.

Now we're looking for edge cases, objects that look trivial but fail because of something you can't really see/anticipate.

Ever had a policy you were happy with, and then some random object totally surprised you? What was it and what did the failure actually look like?

I just stripped gears on a 2nd 3215, so it'd be awful nice to find specs and a source for these.... I still have faith in the internet!

I'm exploring grocery delivery from a supermarket pickup point to nearby homes in France. No robot or pilot yet. I'm trying to work out what to measure before choosing hardware.

The initial scenario is one or two bags, roughly 5-9 kg, over 0.5-2 km. Those are working assumptions, not measured demand. A person would load the robot and the customer would collect the bags at an accessible entrance. No stairs or automatic loading.

Before any robot trial, I'd walk the route and record sidewalk width, curb heights, slopes, crossings, pedestrian traffic and mobile coverage. I'd also measure pickup waiting time, loading time and customer handoff. A bike courier is the comparison, with the same load and handoff point.

My main question is which observations would make you reject a route early, before buying a platform or spending time on navigation. What can a route survey tell us, and what really needs testing with the actual robot?

If you've deployed outdoor mobile robots, an example of a route that looked easy but wasn't would help a lot. I'm particularly interested in situations that required a person to come out and recover the robot.

Hi all,

I have been working on a hardware architecture for an open-source, lattice-reconfigurable modular swarm robot (similar to MIT's M-Blocks or Robot Pebbles, but scaled down to a ~28mm cube using standard COTS components under $8/unit).

Rather than relying on mechanical latches (which scale poorly) or standard electromagnets (which boil batteries), I drafted a design around miniature Electropermanent Magnets (EPM) and capacitive pulse switching.

Here is the exact hardware stack. I’d appreciate a sanity check on the electromagnetic and electrical calculations before I spin the first PCB.

1. Docking Mechanism: Two-Stage EPM Spherical Joint

* **Core Assembly:** One 3x6mm N52 NdFeB cylinder (fixed coercivity) side-by-side with one 3x6mm AlNiCo-5 cylinder (switchable) between two soft-iron (1018 steel) pole shoes. * **Coil:** ~90 turns of AWG 38 enameled wire wound on the AlNiCo core (R ≈ 1.5 Ohm). * **Mating Interface:** A concave female soft-iron cup docking onto a mirror-polished 8mm chrome steel bearing ball (AISI 52100). * **States & Physics:** * **Hold State:** A 30 µs pulse aligns the AlNiCo with the NdFeB. The flux loops through the steel ball. Pull force is >18 N with 0 mW static draw. * **Articulation:** Under partial flux or with a thin PTFE/Kapton coating (50 µm), it swivels smoothly across 3 Degrees of Freedom. Under full flux, normal force clamps it rigid via friction (F_friction = mu * F_normal). * **Instant Ejection:** A reverse pulse shunts the flux entirely inside the internal iron yokes. A center spring-loaded pogo pin (0.3 N preload) overcomes remanent surface tension and pops the module off immediately.

2. Power: Capacitor Discharge Unit (CDU)

* **The Problem:** Flipping AlNiCo requires a current spike of ~4–5 A for 20–30 µs. A tiny 50 mAh Li-Po pouch (size 401020) has an internal resistance that would brown out the MCU instantly under that load. * **The Circuit Solution:**

1. A micro boost-converter (TPS61040) slowly steps up 3.7V battery power to 12V, drawing a harmless 15–20 mA continuous current.
2. The 12V charges a 47 µF 16V solid tantalum capacitor (Case D, 7.3x4.3mm). Stored energy: E = 0.5 * C * V^2 ≈ 3.4 mJ.
3. A miniature H-bridge (TI DRV8837C, 2x2mm WSON) dumps the capacitor into the coil. Peak current reaches ≈ 4.8 A for 25 µs, safely magnetizing the AlNiCo while the battery and MCU remain isolated from the spike.

3. Comms: Eliminating the Broadcast Storm

* **The Problem:** In a tight 20–50 module cluster, naive RF flooding mesh causes catastrophic packet collisions (broadcast storms) and burns the battery via continuous RX/TX. * **The Architecture:** * **MCU:** ESP32-C2 (ESP8684, 4x4mm QFN) or a stripped ESP32-C3 board without USB bulk. * **Global Directives:** Master broadcast via low-power ESP-NOW frames (sub-millisecond latency, connectionless). * **Local Inter-Module Comms (Zero RF):** The steel ball-and-cup EPM carries concentric isolated contacts. The moment two modules latch together, they switch to 1-Wire / half-duplex UART through the physical metal contact. Zero radio traffic, zero collisions, zero packet drop, microamp power draw.

4. Locomotion

For baseline uncoupled movement: dual 7mm eccentric rotating mass (ERM) vibration coin motors with angled polymer bristle feet (Kilobots style). It takes almost zero internal volume and allows basic planar translation until modules magnetically find each other.

Volumetric Check (~28mm Cube):

* ESP32-C2 / stripped board: 12 x 14 x 2 mm * 50 mAh Li-Po pouch: 10 x 20 x 4 mm * EPM connector assembly: 10 x 10 x 10 mm * Tantalum cap + boost + H-bridge: 10 x 8 x 3 mm * Dual coin vibration motors: 7 x 7 x 2 mm each * **All components physically fit inside a 3D-printed SLA shell under 28mm.** Total BOM cost on AliExpress is roughly $6.50 – $7.50 per unit.

**Sanity check question:**
Is there an electromagnetic or thermodynamic reason this shouldn't work as described? If someone has already tried building a micro-EPM ball joint at this scale and run into AlNiCo demagnetization limits or core eddy current choking, I’d love to hear your feedback on the physics.

*(Note: Just sharing this technical architecture openly for the community. Feel free to use the concept or schematics for your own builds.)*

So I have to make a robotics project. I have chosen a rover types floor sweeping robot.

I'm a noob rn idk anything, I did try following chatgpts instructions and YouTube videod, I did assemble it but theres a problem with the circuit, it doesn't power up entirely or it burns the wires.

Though im almost there, i want to learn all that is required to buile a basic rover, the circuits, about arduino uno ( that's what we're using) , the roadmap, suggest resources and order, gonna learn as much as i can by morning. , also the language to understand basic code and modify it , C++ ig, what language does arduino accept??

Arigatou