msadowski

I’m often thinking about job security. That is why I try to keep at least 6 months worth of savings. I figured that worst case I can start looking into changing a career.

Thanks! It really depends on the project. If I'm joining an existing project then pricing specification is very complicated as you don't know the system architecture. In such cases I would opt in for an hourly project.

When architecting a system from scratch it's a bit easier since you don't deal with legacy systems at the beginning. Then when doing specifications I tend to divide the system into parts: actuation, sensing, logic. Then depending on the application I try to choose the best systems for doing the job.

For example if the robot is meant to be used in an agricultural context you know you need some kind of global localization (RTK GPS is probably best), usually you will need an IMU as well (this one will depend on the platform, budget etc). Then if you are expecting some occlusion (e.g. treetops) you might start thinking on what will happen to the GPS signal and what other sensors to add.

I do similar considerations for the actuators and software logic, trying to think of all possible scenario in a representative environment. From my experience if the work is fully remote it takes between 30 minutes to 1 hour just to discuss the environment, allowing me then to propose the best systems for the job.

These are great! Thanks for sharing!

I took the first two projects on Upwork while working full time, afterwards I managed to land my first long term project before my notice period and then I had a constant stream of projects.

Humanoid robots sound super difficult. I don't know how many companies might be working on humanoids so I'd advise you to try to look for something relatively broad. For example mobile robots and drones have been working quite well for me, but hardware wise I'd expect them to be much simpler than humanoids.

Thanks! Will get in touch with you once I settle in!

Thanks for your input! Would you have some advice on running the group? Do you have some specific format of the meeting or do you just say what's on your mind? About accountability - do you kind of 'homeworks' between the two of you or is it more about following through and acting on the discussion you had?

I cannot agree more. When I started getting paid by the hour, I've noticed that doing about 6 hours of full focus paid work is about as much as I can do in a day with full productivity.

You're welcome! Yes, it's very cool. Unfortunately my job is kinda my hobby now and I'll need to change it somehow.

Thanks for the advice! I'm a big fan of value pricing and I've been actively trying to win some contracts like this but didn't succeed (yet).

Also I take projects outside of Upwork, however, I don't get as much traction outside of that platform, and as much as I would like to live off direct contracts it doesn't seem it will happen anytime soon.

80% of the time would be probably software development/integration. Some tasks/requests would look like this:

* We have a working robot now, and this robot will need to perform very repeatable tasks by driving through waypoints. Let's design a state machine that would do that. * We need to make a system for outdoor mapping using a LiDAR. Can you suggest off the shelf LiDAR and localization system that we could use and then integrate everything in ROS? * My robot has misconfigured local navigation and it's not listening. Could you have a look? * The rangefinder we are using on the drone is not performing well. Can you look through the logs and help us troubleshoot it?

Quite often the work requires me to integrate existing software. ROS (Robot Operating System)is amazing for this, as it has lots of open source packages, where some of them work really well out of the box.

I rarely add anything to off-the shelf robots. Most of my clients are making their own robots and want help with architecting/programming these systems. I don't design any components (I don't have almost any experience with electronics). I can do some simple CAD design if needed but my clients are better of hiring someone for CAD anyway.

I'm not sure what do you mean by robot designs from scratch - if you mean robots that you could build and program yourself then yes, there are plenty! I've listed some of the ones I liked the most in Awesome Weekly Robotics (https://github.com/msadowski/awesome-weekly-robotics).

Currently I don't think I would try to compete with someone like Roomba. It would take huge amount of money to create robots like these at scale for the low price of these units. Also all the electronics need to be certified (at least with a CE mark, but I expect something else would also be needed). Rarely one person can pull something like this off from A to Z.

If I'm ever to start a company I would like to try to grow it organically. If I ever get a really good idea I'll definitely give it a shot.

This is very true. I was here because my partner was working at CERN and we didn't want to miss such an opportunity. Still, moving to self-employment was ~2x increase of salary compared to working at a startup in France.

Geneva is crazy expensive and this is the main reason why I'm moving to Prague in two weeks!

I agree with your view. You technically don't have to do screenshots on Upwork but then you are not eligible for payment protection.

On one occasion I had a client not pay, but thanks to the Upwork protection I got paid quickly and then they resolved it with the client.

If I was doing a similar service as UpWork and wanted to offer a kind of payment protection I'm not sure how I would go about that. I'm thinking maybe something like a code diff week-after-week sent to the client but at the same time not everything can be diffed (especially countless meetings with clients). Would you have some ideas?

I promise myself to check out ROS2 for quite a some time now but I never find time for a proper sit down.

I love the idea of ROS2 but the advice I'm usually giving clients is to only look into it as a part of their R&D and to expect to be very early adopters and therefore most likely needing to fix multiple issues that will inevitably come up.

For the companies that have a single product they are focusing on and that they want to push out of the door as quickly as possible with minimum R&D budget I suggest sticking with ROS Melodic (afaik more package support Melodic than Noetic) but I also recommend them to keep an eye out on ROS2 and switching to it as soon as it makes sense for them.

Right now I'm basing almost all my view on ROS2 on Michael Ferguson's blog (https://www.robotandchisel.com/) and particularly this article: https://www.robotandchisel.com/2020/07/29/five-things-ros2/.

When I will finally start experimenting with ROS2 I'm going to start with Autoware course: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTmlhvlmcf8

About the fake soldier-robot video: I think it's a good satire and I hope we will never get to anything similar to this in real life. As you probably noticed from the article I'm not a fan of military robotics.

Thanks for the kind words! I’m glad you enjoy it!

Thanks!

I started by doing two projects on Upwork while working a full time job, then I decided to quit without any projects lined up and was very lucky to find a long term project on Upwork before my 1 month notice period finished.

Marketing wise at the beginning it was just Upwork. Shortly after I started I tried writing technical posts for my blog (mostly related to ROS and some hardware testing/reviews). Around that time I also started Weekly Robotics newsletter (https://weeklyrobotics.com/) but so far it brought only one client onboard but it's a great way to show potential clients that I'm following what's going on in the industry.

When it comes to tips: I would suggest learning ROS - if you have experience in software it should be quite easy for you but expect some learning curve. Then I would suggest doing some projects like integrating SLAM and obstacle avoidance on a mobile robot, ideally with a physical platform.

If I were you I would treat it as a hobby in the beginning and try to have fun and if you find a niche that truly sparks your interest it might be worth specializing in it.

Hi HN!

I've put this article together and thought some of the points I'm making might be relevant for you - especially these about remote work and self-employment. If you have any questions or need some tips then feel free to comment here or send me an e-mail (you'll find it in my profile description)

What is interesting about this initiative is that the same components can be used on different platforms. The project repo [1] has information on these configurations:

* Quadruped 8dof * Quadruped 12dof * Biped 3dof * TriFinger (the link above)

I'd love to build the actuator module from this project one day!

[1] https://github.com/open-dynamic-robot-initiative/open_robot_...

If you want to learn Kalman Filter in depth then I can recommend the open source interactive book Kalman and Bayesian Filters in Python https://github.com/rlabbe/Kalman-and-Bayesian-Filters-in-Pyt...

Here is a GitHub link to the actual Pupper project: https://github.com/stanfordroboticsclub/StanfordQuadruped and not to Stanford Doggo.

I came across this project while working on my newsletter and thought HN might appreciate this. With the $500-600 price I'm heavily thinking of building one for myself.

If someone would like to build something larger then Stanford Dogg (https://github.com/Nate711/StanfordDoggoProject) is one choice, however as far as I remember the price comes to around $3k for parts only.

Even cheaper alternative to Pupper could be OpenCat (https://www.petoi.com/) however it was never fully open source and I don't think it's available anywhere.

5 minutes. Sometime if I get in the flow or I'm in a middle of the meeting I'll skip the break and restart the timer.

Here's what worked for me in lockdown (I had issues working at home) : aim to do minimum 6 pomodoros a day, where each pomodoro is 55 minutes long. When measuring time I try to focus on a single task that's not related to admin work (answering emails etc.) I figured that 6 hours of productive work is not far off from what most people probably get done in an office environment anyway.

Very cool idea! Looks like something that will allow prototyping automatic indoor flight on a tight budget. The only thing I don't like about the design is that if you break an ESC (or other component for that matter) then you most likely need to replace the whole thing, which won't be cheap.

I wish this had a bit more processing power (or a raspberry pi add on) so that it could run ROS but that would definitely hurt the flight time.

Couple of years ago there was a prototyping board Snaodragon Flight that came with built-in cameras for optical flow: https://discuss.ardupilot.org/t/ardubee-a-ready-to-fly-micro.... I think some people here might find it interesting.

I think this depends a lot on what kind of projects you take. If you do lots of small projects for many customers and rarely charge them more than $500 then the charges are indeed terrible.

If however you do more long term projects (I have one active project that has been open for 2 years) then you quickly get to the 10% charge.

I wish they reduced the amount of money you need to earn to enter 5% charge range (it's currently $10k AFAIK) and I imagine it's quite rare for freelancers to get there.

What I think is quite bad on UpWork when it comes to charges is the 'connects' that you have to pay for since last year I think. Last I checked it was up to $1 USD per project proposal, which might make it very difficult for some people to get their foot in.

I don't think you are liable for any taxes just because you have a bank account in some place. If your company is registered outside of the US and you are not an US citizen then you shouldn't have to pay taxes there but as someone in tgis thread said - better ask an accountant.

Instead of "loss" I consider it a service price for discoverability and the payment guarantees for hourly projects.

I also don't mind paying since so far it's been the best method to get projects for me so far.

I was looking into this when I started freelancing on UpWork. I found that the best option for me was to have an US ACH account through TransferWise, otherwise I was looking at either high transfer fees, currency conversion fees or all of the above + a rate that is far off from the market rate.

With the current setup the only cost I have are the TransferWise fees for USD to EUR conversion when I send the money to my local bank.

I'm probably too late to this topic: but if your skills are related to Robotics and you were laid off let me know at mat@weeklyrobotics.com and I'll share your profile with all the readers of Weekly Robotics newsletter.

I run a robotics themed weekly newsletter as a side project.

At one point I decided that it would be nice to add header images to every issue. I decided to do it through a quick and dirty python script that adds the text for me.

Another thing I've just recently automated is the python script calling mailchimp API to show me the most popular link together with unique opens. I'm currently planning to embedd this info in every issue.

The next step that I'd like to automate is the campaign creation. With the API I don't suppose this will be a huge deal, just need to put some time on this. When I have it then I'd like to create a commit hook that will do all of these things automatically after pushing changes to the repo.

That's pretty cool! Is there any way to export this data as an .stl? Some of the scenes would make cool 3D prints