I'd like to get into robotics

[d000hg]

If you widen your view of robotics from cool walking robots, there is probably a bunch of stuff. A guy I know works on specialised semi-autonomous probes for crawling along oil pipelines, and there are all kinds of robots of various types in various areas of industry I should think... I doubt it's a major area in the UK but we do still have oil rigs and some mining/quarrying as well as chemical plants, the military, etc.

[Purple Dalek]

How much "robotics" outside of Uni do you think goes on in the UK?

You would need to be living in Japan or have a Phd/Msc in the subject to even be considered in the handful of UK robotics companies.

I don't think PHP and LAMP are going to get you far in the world of robotics.

I did a robotics contract in the UK some years ago, oop north near Chesterfield, in a set of portacabins in a warehouse on wasteland just off the M1. Really salubrious. It was a CMM: imagine a machine, 2 metre cube, weighing well over a ton moving a tip with a tiny ruby on it on the end of an arm to an accuracy of less than a micron. The tip costs several thousand £ to replace if it accidentally gets rammed into something. Wonderful math popping out of the most bizarre places that needed to be analysed, modelled and implemented.

Yes, an MSc or PhD in Maths / Mech / Electronics Engineering type discipline are minimum requirements, and you probably need to be at that level in all three to be anything but implementing someone elses stuff.

[FSM with Cheddar]

Standford university is offering some of it's robotics courses for free online. The only thing you don't get is the tutoring.

I've been planning to look at it for months now, but haven't got round to it.

Linky

P.S Robotics is really hard (did a little bit at uni), it involves lots of maths.
P.P.S Robotics doesn't pay very well. I looked into a number of permi roles a while back. Most of them pay £35K ish, but you get the chance to do a PHD with it. Which is the real aim of most of the posts.

[Churchill]

When you say "Robotics", do you mean the AI/control or the mechanical aspects?

[TimberWolf]

Any ideas how one might get into robotics...(Advice along the lines of "do a four year degree course, culminating in an MSc" won't be considered constructive.)

Way cool!

(Being unconstructive, you could get an MSc in under 2 years, even doing it part-time).

Robotics looks like a big area and I imagine movement/autonomy/intelligence/natural language processing is more advanced and easier to accomplish than artificial vision.

[voodooflux]

You could also try playing with Microsoft Robotics Studio (its free)

You can create robots and run your programs in a virtual world without having to spend lots of money on the real things.

You can use that alongside Lego Mindstorms NXT too

More here: Microsoft Robotics Studio and Lego Mindstorms NXT

[FSM with Cheddar]

You could also try playing with Microsoft Robotics Studio (its free)

You can create robots and run your programs in a virtual world without having to spend lots of money on the real things.

[d000hg]

It sounds like this is something you might have to consider as a hobby rather than a career, without any education or 'proper' programming. Of course amateur work in the field could one day get you in to it through the back door.

Are you familiar with Lego Mindstorm?

[DimPrawn]

How much "robotics" outside of Uni do you think goes on in the UK?

You would need to be living in Japan or have a Phd/Msc in the subject to even be considered in the handful of UK robotics companies.

I don't think PHP and LAMP are going to get you far in the world of robotics.

[OwlHoot]

I'd have liked to get into games programming, but apparently the rates are rubbish and the hours slavish, and my geeky, humourless, borderline autistic cousin, who's a games programming guru, is the best advert against going anywhere near it.

Any ideas how one might get into robotics, with skills mostly comprising perl and PHP and LAMP, with some dabbling in .Net?

(Advice along the lines of "do a four year degree course, culminating in an MSc" won't be considered constructive.)