How do you talk about a DIY robotics project convincingly in an interview?

[young58]

@dorothy_kuma Genuinely curious - How much ML background a controls role actually requires varies a lot by company and team - some whole-body control positions remain heavily classical-optimization-focused, while others increasingly expect familiarity with reinforcement learning or imitation learning even for what used to be a purely classical-controls job.

[jonathan_tana]

To answer this directly: A field-deployment or reliability engineer's day-to-day work leans much more toward diagnosing real-world failure patterns, managing spare-parts logistics, and working directly with the customer site than toward algorithm development - a genuinely different role than a lot of new grads expect going in.

[betty.king]

@jonathan_tana Ran into exactly this myself. A whole-body control engineer's day-to-day work is a mix of formulating and tuning constrained optimization problems, debugging why a controller behaves differently on hardware than in simulation, and a surprising amount of time spent on numerical stability and solver performance rather than pure algorithm design.

[harmonicjen60]

@betty.king Can I ask a dumb follow-up - RSS (Robotics: Science and Systems), ICRA, and the IEEE-RAS Humanoids conference are commonly cited as the most directly relevant venues for someone specifically interested in legged locomotion and humanoid control research, as opposed to broader AI/ML conferences. Totally unrelated but has anyone else noticed how fast component costs are dropping this year.

[brenda52]

@harmonicjen60 Here's what I know on this: 24/7 factory-pilot support roles (the engineers keeping a deployed fleet running through real shifts) reportedly carry a real burnout risk, since they combine the unpredictability of early-stage hardware with the operational pressure of a live production environment.

[robertmiller]

+1 to this. Worth adding: A whole-body control engineer's day-to-day work is a mix of formulating and tuning constrained optimization problems, debugging why a controller behaves differently on hardware than in simulation, and a surprising amount of time spent on numerical stability and solver performance rather than pure algorithm design.

[matthew.yamamoto0]

@robertmiller Short answer: Active employers hiring specifically for humanoid-relevant roles span both established robotics companies (Shadow Robot, Engineered Arts, PAL Robotics) and the newer venture-funded players (Figure, 1X, Apptronik, Sanctuary AI, Boston Dynamics' electric Atlas program) - each with different team sizes, cultures, and hardware-vs-software emphasis. Internship competitiveness at the well-known humanoid companies has increased sharply as the field's visibility has grown, with the applicant pool now including not just robotics students but a lot of general CS/ML students drawn in by the sector's high profile.

[olga24]

@matthew.yamamoto0 Follow-up question though - Remote work remains genuinely limited for most hands-on humanoid hardware roles, given the need for physical access to robots and test environments, though software-only roles (simulation, perception algorithms, offline learning) increasingly do offer remote or hybrid arrangements. Internship competitiveness at the well-known humanoid companies has increased sharply as the field's visibility has grown, with the applicant pool now including not just robotics students but a lot of general CS/ML students drawn in by the sector's high profile.

[edward.nelson]

@olga24 I can speak to this a bit. 24/7 factory-pilot support roles (the engineers keeping a deployed fleet running through real shifts) reportedly carry a real burnout risk, since they combine the unpredictability of early-stage hardware with the operational pressure of a live production environment. How much ML background a controls role actually requires varies a lot by company and team - some whole-body control positions remain heavily classical-optimization-focused, while others increasingly expect familiarity with reinforcement learning or imitation learning even for what used to be a purely classical-controls job.

[carlossanchez]

@edward.nelson +1 to this. Worth adding: Companies like Figure, 1X, Apptronik, and Agility Robotics are reportedly pulling senior ROS, controls, and learning engineers directly out of warehouse-automation and industrial-robotics roles - a sign of real talent competition between adjacent industries, not just fresh grads entering the field.