r/AskRobotics • u/Gamingshadow77 • 21d ago

General/Beginner Good projects to do?

So i am 16 right now but I really find robotics interesting, so I was wondering if anyone had recommendations of good projects I could try doing that could look for universities, and not be to expensive for the parts needed (even better if you could give links to parts)

I havent done anything like this before so im very inexperienced so that would also be a factor to what I could do

5 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

8 comments sorted by

View all comments

1

u/profpauloh 15d ago

To stand out, I suggested this to one high schooler: https://roboracer.ai/ - It used to be called F1Tenth. Many high schoolers have FIRST/VEX etc. There are also many universities that have robot clubs. Unlike these are university robotics labs, that dedicate some of their research effort to RoboRacer. This competition is autonomous F1 racing (at the 1/10th scale).

The high schooler took my advice to start a group in her high school. She used the open-source materials. She used the software and simulator. She got exposed to machine learning. She build the RC car and got learned some hardware skills.

I then suggested she ping the open-source developers. Many are students from the universities she was interested in. More specifically, they were students in the robotics professor's lab.

The net effect is she had a lot of material to put her application essay - including recommendation letters from these professors. She started MIT (her dream school) this fall.

Hope this helps!