Can a Degree in Electronics Could Lead To a Career in Robotics!

Hey there! If you're new here, my name is Mayur. I graduated from the University of Bristol in Advanced Robotics & AI, and now I'm doing my research in one of the biggest robotics labs in the UK. Today, I'm going to answer a question that comes up a lot: How important is Electronics Engineering in robotics?

• Can you get into robotics if you have an Electronics background?
• Are you making the wrong choice by picking electronics even though you love Robotics?
• Is it too late to get into robotics because you graduated with an Electronics Engineering degree?

The short answer is, yes, electronics engineering is super important for robotics. But how? Let me explain that by sharing my personal story, since I started with an Electronics Engineering background.

I'll also highlight why electronics engineering is crucial in robotics with the help of human nervous system analogy and lastly I will provide a practical key takeaway for anyone looking to break into the field.

• Personal Story
• Why electronics matter in robotics?
• Robotics Nervous system
• One Key Takeaway

Personal Story

I started my career as an electronics engineer because, at the time, there wasn't an option to major in robotics. The internet wasn't helpful because most of the information was pretty generic. But I knew I wanted to build robots, and to do that, I needed to learn electronics, mechanics, and coding. So, I went with what was available which was electronics. Fast forward to today, in 2023, I've graduated from a top UK university and worked with some of the most advanced robots. Plus, I've won over 30 national-level robotics, coding, and design competitions! To be honest, there hasn't been a single day when I haven't used electronics while building robots.

And now, I realize that choosing electronics was one of the best decisions I ever made for

"It's way easier to learn (I mean hands-on experience) coding on your own, but not electronics design."

Let me break it down for you.

For practicing coding, all you need is a computer and YouTube or some courses and you can do it from the comfort of your home . But for some serious electronics engineering practice, means building circuits and then testing them under various conditions, you definitely need different instrumentation devices. It's quite a challenging job. Just to give you some context, during my internship as a research assistant, I spent 7 months testing load sensors to understand the wear and tear losses on robot joints when they go through different high-impact activities. I had to spend 6 hours in the lab every day, working with multiple instrumentation devices like expensive sensors, DSO, Signal conditioning circuits, Data acquisition systems, Oscilloscopes, Power supplies, Spectrum analyzers, and Function generators.

As a student, affording these fancy devices was just not possible for me. But guess who had them? My university! So I started using the university labs to work on my projects. Sure, none of the courses actually taught me how to apply electronics to robotics domain since my major was pure electronics, but I got my fundamentals right. And the whole time, I had my robotics ideas at the back of my mind. So I ended up using my electronics knowledge for my own robotics projects. I mean, the knowledge is transferable in robotics. And yes, I had to figure some things out on my own, but it was such a fun journey that the process felt very organic!

Why Electronics matter in Robotics?

Let me give you an analogy to make it clearer. You know how our nervous system helps all parts of our body communicate and react to changes both inside and outside?

It uses electrical and chemical signals to send and receive messages, right? Well, it's kind of like that with robots too. When we write code, it creates different signals to control various parts of the robot, so it can perform specific tasks. In robotics, there are lots of subsystems like sensors, actuators, communication systems, and control systems that need to work together seamlessly. And guess what? Electronics knowledge is super important for designing and implementing these subsystems and their interfaces. Plus, troubleshooting any issues that come up while building robots is crucial. Which below video from Tesla's actuator team, it will give you much better idea about why custom components are required in robots.

And who's going to do all of this? You, as an electronics/hardware engineer!

Since robotics is still such a new field, you won't always use off-the-shelf hardware like Nvidia GPU devices or sensors for your projects. Sometimes, you have to build or customise your own, especially if you're planning to build custom robots (I had to do this for my startup). In such case, you might end up designing custom electronic hardware from scratch to suit your specific needs. And for this, you either need to be an electronics expert or have one on your team .For example, some of you might know that I am designing an intelligent bionic leg for people with lower limb amputation,In this project I spent 2 years just designing following components

• Custom sensors for data collection,
• Actuator control for movement and interaction and
• Custom control systems as the robot's brain
• Communication systems

All these parts had to be designed carefully so that they can talk to each other properly.

We can discuss each of these areas for hours if you like so feel free to drop me a DM on instagram or Twitter, and we can take it from there to make you understand the scale of robotics but the bottom line is there's are so many challenges that needs solving in these areas and for that we do need good electronics engineers.

Key Takeaway

Robotics is truly unique. It's not like other fields where you learn only specific domain knowledge and that's it. In robotics, no matter where you start – be it electronics, mechanical, or computer science – further down the line, you'll eventually gain knowledge about other fields as well. So, start wherever you find the most enjoyable and trust the process. The important thing is to begin as early as possible because the sooner you start, the better off you'll be.

I will continue sharing my personal journey and I plan to share important insights once a month so feel free to sign up below and feel free to share it with your friends who could benefit from it and wish to get into robotics.

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Let's build the future, one robot at a time!