Software-wise, where do you think the bottleneck lies in acquiring development abilities for robotics?

[xxxRobotics]

I've been pondering this over the last few days. Robotics development is an incredibly complex process! To build a robot, you need to understand a vast array of fields: mechanics, motion control, perception, software, electronics. With AI becoming more prevalent in our lives, there are undoubtedly many ways we can improve the development process, particularly from a software perspective. One idea I had is something like ROS-O, a kind of robot operating system that could generalize every sensor into a common API using AI, providing developers with a much simpler interface for building robotic applications. Or perhaps we could take it a step further and develop an ML tool that identifies new connections and performs self-diagnostics and characterization of the robot's components to enable complex actions.

Where do you think the main difficulties lie?

 

[MyGRT]

From my perspective, the main software bottlenecks in robotics development include:

Integration of Diverse Systems: Robotics involves integrating hardware (sensors, actuators) with software (control algorithms, AI). Each component often comes with its own interface and data format, making seamless integration challenging. A standardized API could alleviate this issue.

Real-time Processing: Robotics requires real-time processing of sensor data and decision-making, which can be computationally intensive. Ensuring low latency and high reliability in real-time systems is a significant challenge.

Machine Learning and Adaptability: While AI and machine learning can enhance robotics, developing robust models that can adapt to new environments and tasks remains difficult. An ML tool for self-diagnostics and characterization could help, but it needs to be highly reliable and efficient.

Scalability and Flexibility: As robots become more complex, the software must scale accordingly. Designing software that can handle this complexity while remaining flexible enough to adapt to new hardware or tasks is a major hurdle.

User-Friendly Development Environments: Many current tools and frameworks require deep expertise in robotics and programming. Developing more intuitive interfaces and development environments could lower the barrier to entry and speed up the development process.

 

[artbyrobot]

The only bottleneck I imagine is just getting hung up learning a ton of AI stuff or w/e but not actually having a project you are passionate about where you are making progress to keep your morale up and keep you moving forward. It would be hard to persist if you didn't have that carrot on the end of your stick.