Homemade Robotics: How to start learning autonomous robotics at home?

If you are really interested in learning autonomous robotics at home, it is interesting to note that there is no age limit to start learning in this field. If you are a self learner or a hobbyist, google and you will find lots of information. Filter out useful information and start your journey into robotics. Remember, there is lot of garbage info on Internet which may lead to unnecessary wastage of money and time. If you are not a self learner, attend any robotic workshops conducted by different institutes. In this way, you will find a better way towards the journey and it will save you valuable time and money. Things are getting easier with the open learning initiatives. Try youtube to find lecture videos on robotics. Try finding videos that show how to build homemade robots with microcontrollers, DC motors, and batteries. Downloading ebooks usually leads to cluttering up disk memory and is not a wise option. A good approach would be to take autonomous robotics as an academic course and then start doing homemade robotics projects for example start building a homemade robotic hand as described in the pictures and video. If it’s also your hobby, then it’s a plus point.

1. Define a course outline (Take inspiration from various robotics training institutes)
2. Define a timeline for each topic.
3. Clearly understand each topic, try to test yourself with reasoning.
4. As a part of this self initiated course, follow up periodically with hands on experiments with ready to assemble and use kits available from various robotics training institutes.

Instructors from training institutes can guide you on a course line recommended to be followed by beginners and then add up useful links to each topic, video lectures, and relevant learning tools that are good for beginners, as it is important to parse the junk info. When you gain some basic knowledge, then start your robotics career at home.

In contrast, taking training from a robotics institute is like visiting the right route with a good guide equipped with proper tools, but don’t enter into the world of robotics just because your friends are doing that or to win prizes. I have found out many, many students who are just attending the workshops to “Make (or Get)” a robot such that they can participate in a competition as required according to their universities. Even some others attend only for “certification”.

If you are a self learner and want to learn homemade robotics, this document may be useful to you

http://the-arelab.org/downloads/51devb01.pdf

This is basically the user manual of the robotic development board from my friend Ananda who sells this stuff on his website. But it is a tutorial also.

For embedded systems of robotics, you can have a look at this useful document by Ananda.

http://the-arelab.org/downloads/EMB02.pdf

Ananda Sankar Kundu – the owner of The Arelab runs a robotics Institute and still now he has trained more than 4000 students of which many are successful in achieving their goals in robotics whatever it be a prize winning or career building aspect. But when Ananda was a student, he had not undergone any specific training from any institute. What he had was immense willingness to do something. His resources were lots of books and google itself. In the initial stages, he was not successful in all experiments. In fact more that 70 percent of his homemade robotics experiments were a failure because of scrap and garbage information available from the Internet. And for this, lots of his money and time were wasted, so according to Ananda the best route is to do course from a robotics training organization like http://the-arelab.org and then start building your own homemade robots at home like homemade line following robots, homemade robotic lawn mowers, homemade robotic pool cleaners, etc. So I wish you good luck for your career. If you encounter any problems, contact Ananda through his website.