• Question: do have any advice for children who want to be involved with robotic engineering?

    Asked by puppyloverxx to Patrick, Dino, Cara, Aisling on 7 Mar 2018.
    • Photo: Patrick Lynch

      Patrick Lynch answered on 7 Mar 2018:

      Yes. Don’t wait! Don’t wait for someone to show you. You’re teachers or parents might never introduce you to robots. Don’t wait until you go to college there is so much you can learn before then. If you’re interested there are so many resources available online you shouldn’t wait just start teaching yourself. Use tickercad circuits, its a website, set up a free account and follow some of the tutorials. If you want to spend a small amount of money (€20-€30) get an arduino and/or a raspberry pi. Find a project online, use websites like the arduino website, the raspberry pi website and instructables and start building. Robotics is so much fun and everyone can be involved. Small confession, those websites that I’ve sent you to, I use them all the time in my work, they are for absolute beginners and are still super useful when you’ve been working on robots for years.

    • Photo: Cara O'Brien

      Cara O'Brien answered on 7 Mar 2018:

      Try getting your hands on some of the DIY robot kits, they’re really cool and not too expensive. Everything you learn when you make them is exactly the same as what we’re taught in engineering. I wish I had known about them when I was younger, it would have made engineering a lot easier for me in college!

    • Photo: Aisling Lee

      Aisling Lee answered on 7 Mar 2018:

      I would say get your hands on a pen and paper and get doodling.
      its hard for some people to get access to the equipment necessary to learn about robotics and then to find good resources.
      However nothing can stop your imagination and drawing up ideas and writing down how you think they’d work is a great start.
      If you have access to a computer and internet checking out some videos and educational sites (like roboslam.wordpress.com) where they give you the building blocks to start from are great.
      Depending on what your interested in there are many options out there for development boards like Raspberry pi, Arduino, Texas Instruments, Intel Galileo and many many more. These micro controllers are a great investment and can be used in any project you can imagine.

      Id suggest starting out learning some coding language too. I learned C first and its a really good language as most others are based on it. Arduino, Python, scratch are also great starting places. Check out PIC and Genie development boards too they use a flow chart style programming software which makes it easy to visualize whats happening

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