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Re: How do professors/advisors in this space typically fund PhD students right now?

Posted: Sun Dec 07, 2025 4:58 am
by carter42
@jessica_faro Appreciate the detailed answer. 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.

Re: How do professors/advisors in this space typically fund PhD students right now?

Posted: Tue Dec 09, 2025 1:39 am
by sarah.santos3
@carter42 Worth being a little skeptical of the marketing angle here. 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.

Re: How do professors/advisors in this space typically fund PhD students right now?

Posted: Tue Dec 09, 2025 12:50 pm
by diego.moore6
@sarah.santos3 Genuinely curious - In the UK, base salaries for robotics roles reportedly range from around £50,000 for new graduates up to roughly £200,000 for senior whole-body-control or reinforcement-learning specialists - a notably wide band reflecting how specialized the top end of the field has become.

Re: How do professors/advisors in this space typically fund PhD students right now?

Posted: Mon Dec 15, 2025 7:24 pm
by mia_lars
@diego.moore6 Worth being a little skeptical of the marketing angle here. 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. Reminds me a bit of the early drone hobbyist scene, honestly.

Re: How do professors/advisors in this space typically fund PhD students right now?

Posted: Wed Dec 17, 2025 8:58 am
by karen_kim
Small correction on one detail: In the UK, base salaries for robotics roles reportedly range from around £50,000 for new graduates up to roughly £200,000 for senior whole-body-control or reinforcement-learning specialists - a notably wide band reflecting how specialized the top end of the field has become.

Re: How do professors/advisors in this space typically fund PhD students right now?

Posted: Fri Dec 26, 2025 4:46 am
by nicole57
@karen_kim I'll believe the stronger version of that claim when it's independently verified. A strong, well-documented personal project (even a modest DIY build or a solid simulation-based RL project) reportedly carries real weight in hiring for this field, partly because the field is young enough that a demonstrated hands-on track record can meaningfully substitute for a less-relevant formal credential. 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.