[Mobuis1995]

In my school, we recently started a robotics club. Because none of us really knew anything about robotics, it was rather hard at first,but very interesting (also, the fact that our supervisor used to be an engineer helped a lot). Because I was the only one with prior knowledge in programming, I was selected to be the head programmer. Honestly, it wasn't perfect by far, however, it is pretty nice for our first time, I must say, and we are expecting to do well in next weeks competition. My school requires an internship for seniors, and a few of us that played integral parts in getting the robot to work were offered robotics internships. At first, I was psyched, but then I wondered if I had the skills. I programmed it in RobotC. The language was very easy to me, and programming robots in the field does not seem easy at all.

What should I study over the summer? C, C++? I can't find many robot-specific sites that teach programming, usually it's just the construction. Even the robotics textbooks I bought hardly delve into actual programming, only flowcharts and such. If anyone has experience or knowledge in this field, any help is appreciated in pointing me in the right direction.

This post has been edited by Mobuis1995: 06 May 2012 - 10:22 AM

[turboscrew]

I'd recommend C over C++, because small robots may not have enough memory for the runtime library. Some things may need assembly too (interrupts).
Also I recommend having a peek into basics of digital signal processing. Especially signal conditioning and filtering. Robotics is quite close to process control and cybernetics, and sometimes AI.

This post has been edited by turboscrew: 06 May 2012 - 11:19 AM

[r.stiltskin]

Robotics is a huge field. If your interests are primarily programming and AI, you can literally make a career of it without ever (or hardly ever) delving into the hardware or low level details of signal processing and the like. Your post wasn't very specific, but since you mentioned RobotC I'm guessing that you're working with an NXT, and if so you're probably concentrating for the near-term at least on relatively high-level aspects such as vision, navigation, mapping, planning, and so on.

My suggestion is to study C++. Once you're proficient in C++ you'll have no trouble picking up C by yourself if and when you need it.

You might be interested in looking at this link to nxtOSEK, an open source platform for programming NXT robots in C/C++. And I also found this link to an nxtOSEK Programming Manual that you may find helpful.

[Mobuis1995]

r.stiltskin, on 06 May 2012 - 01:06 PM, said:

Robotics is a huge field. If your interests are primarily programming and AI, you can literally make a career of it without ever (or hardly ever) delving into the hardware or low level details of signal processing and the like. Your post wasn't very specific, but since you mentioned RobotC I'm guessing that you're working with an NXT, and if so you're probably concentrating for the near-term at least on relatively high-level aspects such as vision, navigation, mapping, planning, and so on.

My suggestion is to study C++. Once you're proficient in C++ you'll have no trouble picking up C by yourself if and when you need it.

You might be interested in looking at this link to nxtOSEK, an open source platform for programming NXT robots in C/C++. And I also found this link to an nxtOSEK Programming Manual that you may find helpful.

Sorry for the lack of specificity, yes I'm mainly the programmer and am only interested in the programming side of robotics. Thanks a lot for the link, just what I needed!

[masoug]

Just curious, what robotics program are you participating in?

[Mobuis1995]

masoug, on 09 May 2012 - 12:45 PM, said:

Just curious, what robotics program are you participating in?

A competition at pasaic county college. We ended up taking second though, however in our defense, the other team was modifying between heats, which wasn't allowed... not that our team didn't do a teenie-bit