Robots

I’ve been quite interested in robots since the second half of last year. You can see that in the “projects” category of my blog, there is a project related to robots called OriginBot.

I can’t remember why I became interested in robots last year. Thinking back, I majored in automation in college and participated in some related competitions. So maybe I’ve always liked robots subconsciously.

There are three robot images that have been lingering in my mind. One is BB-8 from “Star Wars”, the second is Baymax from “Big Hero 6”, and the third is JARVIS from “The Avengers” (strictly speaking, JARVIS is not a robot but an intelligent system). This might further confirm that I like robots in my subconscious.

Last year, I came across Guyuehome, which has a lot of introductions and courses related to robots. There are tutorials on STM32 which is more about embedded systems, as well as ROS2 for upper - layer application development, and cutting - edge knowledge related to AI like reinforcement learning. Combining my skills, I chose to start with ROS2. Coincidentally, Guyuehome developed the open - source robot project OriginBot at that time, so I bought one and could learn while modifying the code.

In the following months, I gradually developed several small functions:

1. Mobile Monitoring
   The function is a bit similar to the camera function of a robotic vacuum cleaner. It allows me to see the images from the robot’s camera on my phone. However, it takes a photo at regular intervals instead of providing continuous video. The main reason for this development at that time was that video files are too large and require a large amount of cloud server bandwidth, and server bandwidth is very expensive. As an amateur hobby, it wasn’t cost - effective.
2. Simple Voice Control
   By speaking a specified location into the phone, the robot can navigate there on its own. Of course, it is necessary to map the environment in advance using SLAM.
3. Multi - target Point Continuous Navigation
   Multiple target points can be sent to the Nav2 - related code in the form of a list, and then the robot can navigate to the target points. This is an optimization of the open - source function. The open - source version can only achieve navigation by manually specifying a target point and pose through Rviz.

At the beginning of this year, I even had the idea of changing my career to robot development because I liked it so much. But the risks were too high. First, with my current robot - development skills, I definitely couldn’t get my current salary (although I believe that given me half a year, I could master the relevant skills proficiently, but which company would be willing to give an employee half a year to learn?). Second, even if I was willing to take a pay cut, it was estimated that not many companies would be willing to hire me, unless I was willing to accept a very low salary, which was obviously not what I wanted.

Around the beginning of June, I found that CSI had created the Robot Index (H30590), and there were already four related index funds. Later, I selected Bosera CSI Robot Index Initiation A (018094) for regular investment, which can be regarded as another way to participate in this industry.

I started the regular investment in the robot index fund not only because of my interest in robots, but also because I truly found that the era of robots has started.

Today’s robots are a bit like smartphones in 2013 and autonomous driving in 2017, at the starting stage of industry prosperity.