Anyone gone from industrial automation into humanoid-specific roles? How was the transition?

[emilyperez]

@erik_novi Slight correction, though the overall point stands: 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.

[nicole57]

Ran into exactly this myself. 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.

[chenperez]

@nicole57 Same conclusion I've come to. Also worth noting: A commonly cited skill gap in new-grad applicants is practical systems integration experience - many candidates are individually strong in ML or in mechanical design, but comparatively few have hands-on experience getting perception, planning, and control to work together reliably on real hardware under time pressure. 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.

[ivan22]

@chenperez One nitpick - 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. 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.

[jonathan.rao1]

@ivan22 Counterpoint: The common academic path into this field is a master's or conversion course in robotics or machine learning, followed by an internship or research role at a known lab or company - a PhD is common but increasingly not strictly required for industry roles, especially on the applied engineering side.

[carlossanchez]

@jonathan.rao1 Small correction on one detail: 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.

[charlesbianchi]

Slight correction, though the overall point stands: 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. Kind of makes me think about how different this all looked even three years ago.

[sarah.santos3]

One nitpick - 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. 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.

[diego.moore6]

@sarah.santos3 Ran into exactly this myself. Transitioning from industrial automation into humanoid-specific roles is a increasingly common and viable path, since a lot of the underlying skills (motion control, safety systems, real-time software) transfer directly, even though the specific dynamics and learned-control components are new. 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.

[kwilliams]

@diego.moore6 I'd take that specific number with a grain of salt, honestly. A commonly cited skill gap in new-grad applicants is practical systems integration experience - many candidates are individually strong in ML or in mechanical design, but comparatively few have hands-on experience getting perception, planning, and control to work together reliably on real hardware under time pressure.