Robotics For Beginners

This is a learning guide for absolute beginners who want to build a humanoid walking robot from scratch.

This assumes the following:

1. You want to build something substantial, like a walking robot, but have no prior experience.
2. You don't know the basic terminology, parts that a humanoid robot should be comprised of. e.g. actuators, servos, etc.
3. You don't know the basic software and algorithms that train a humanoid robot to move.
4. You don't know how to start building a walking robot with the available open-source resources.
5. You want a step-by-step guide of how to build this walking robot.

FAQs before starting:

Do I need to know math, programming and machine learning concepts to build this humanoid robot?

Yes you do. We will point out concepts to learn and open-sourced courses to follow. Learning these concepts from scratch would require a lot of patience and practice. We will point out technical material to skip if not necessary.

Is knowledge in 3D printing required?

Most probably, unless we can find off-the-shelf parts. If we can, they will be documented here. If not, we will document the 3D printing process.

What is your teaching approach?

We define the goal, which is to build a walking humanoid robot, then backward engineer all the learning material required to turn this goal into a reality. This documentation will aim to provide every single detail required to design, assemble and train a walking humanoid robot. If there's an opportunity to skip technical material that does not contribute to the goal, we will skip it.

Basic terminology and why they are important:

1. Actuator
2. Gearbox
3. Difference between under-actuated and over-actuated
4. Servomotor (Servo)
5. Firmware
6. Robot Operating System (ROS)
7. Reinforcement Learning

This is clearly incomplete and a work in progress; you can help by expanding it!