The internet is what students, both young and old, turn to in order to gain knowledge on almost everything – from learning how to tie a Windsor knot and how to bake a pizza from scratch to how to build satellites on their own and even learn robotics! The world wide web has become an extremely integral part of our lives so much so that certain universities offer online certificate courses and even confer degrees online! Thanks to the internet, staying technologically up to date has become one of the most fundamental essentials to stay at par with the advancing world. This article aims to bring you a step closer to one such remarkable technological advancement, i.e. robotics. As intriguing and exciting as it sounds, the knowledge of this interdisciplinary sector of science can also prove to be a huge asset and with the online courses for introduction to robotics for beginners, it has become a lot easier to learn robotics.
Online Robotics Courses for Becoming Future-Ready
A lot of things in the world today run with the help of robots; right from cleaning homes, and cooking food, to assembling cars in huge manufacturing plants and defense, robots have found a place in almost every possible field of work one can think of. Being a human fortunate enough to live in the age of technology, enjoying the benefits of our e-friends is reason enough to learn robotics and know how they work. So, here’s a list of five online courses that you can enroll in to get an introduction to robotics and explore the field.
Related: Surprisingly Obvious Reasons Robotics Should Be Taught in Schools
Robotics Specialization
Offered on: Coursera
Offered by: University of Pennsylvania
This series of six courses is a robotics for beginners online course that teaches you various concepts including aerial robotics, where it introduces the mechanics of flight and the design of quadrotor flying robots, computational motion planning, how robots move around, and much more over a period of 7 months approximately. Besides, this online certificate course includes the current real-life application of robots and what their future will be. As you go about this course you will also learn how to work on Matlab, a mathematical computing software. It consists of various exercises that will help you to implement the knowledge you gain thus helping you learn by doing, and this makes it one of the best robotics courses out there.
Introduction to Robotics
Offered on: NPTEL
Offered by: IIT Bombay
This robotics for beginners online course is a free course offered by one of the most esteemed engineering institutes of India: Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay (IIT Bombay). This robotics course is great for students who are either currently pursuing a degree in engineering or a similar field or already have one. It begins with an introduction to robotics and makes its way through the technologies in robotics, industrial robots, trajectory planning, robot dynamics, and control, and ends with practical examples and the future applications, making it one of the most wholesome courses to learn robotics. With various examples and problems to solve on the way, this course also offers an insight into robotics at an advanced level with a learning-by-doing approach.
Electricity & Electronics – Robotics, Learn by Building
Offered on: Udemy
Offered by: Ian Juby – Robotics Engineer & Educator at Tech Valley Science Centre
As its name suggests, this online course helps you learn robotics with a learning-by-doing methodology at its core. This course, unlike the previous two courses, is an absolute robotics for beginners course and doesn’t require any prior knowledge in electronics or robotics; the only exception is mathematics, whose basic knowledge would make going through the course easier. This is one of the best online courses for newbies as it teaches the basics of electronics and circuit making right from scratch. It also teaches how to control servo motors, ‘the robotics engineer’s best friend’, as the tutor of this course puts it. By the end of this robotics course, you will have gained knowledge about the very basics of robotics and made circuits of your own.
Begin Robotics
Offered on: FutureLearn
Offered by: University of Reading
A four-week robotics for beginners online course, Begin Robotics is a freshers’ course that starts with the most basic lessons in robotics, as the name suggests. This course is a great way to learn robotics as it gives an overview of different types of robots and their applications and acquaints you with the history of robotics along with an introduction to robotics. As the course proceeds, it focuses on the technical nitty-gritty of robotics, of which problem-solving is a huge part. Each weekly module ends with a task that keeps a check on your progress.
Introduction to Robotics
Offered on: STEMpedia
Offered by: STEMpedia
What makes this online robotics course stand apart among other robotics courses is that it’s a super beginner level course that even 10-year-old children can take. It is a part of a series of online courses, called The STEM Safari, that covers the essence of electronics, programming, and the latest technologies such as robotics, and more with a hands-on learning approach.
Providing an introduction to robotics, the course teaches kids the fundamentals of robotics, such as what a robot is, what are the different types of robots, and their applications. It also introduces four different types of robots namely the Smartphone-Controlled Robot, Follow the Enemy Robot, Obstacle Avoiding Robot, and Pick and Place Robot. By covering these types, it introduces various concepts related to sensing and control. It includes some basic circuit making and programming skills. The best part, that differentiates this robotics for beginners course from others, is that the programs are written in Scratch, a graphical programming software that makes learning to code easy and fun by allowing beginners to jump right into practical coding by animating games, programming and controlling robots in real-time, and making interactive DIY projects. It also includes periodic assessment and project-making that ensure that knowledge gained is efficiently utilized.
Related: 10 Tips for Kids and Beginners to Learn Robotics Basics
In a Nutshell
To understand the real-world applications of STEM, stay at par with the advancing world, and prepare for a technology-driven future, one needs to have some kind of understanding of robotics. With the Internet, there is a plethora of knowledge available right at our fingertips, quite literally, and online courses are the best place to comprehensively grasp the nuances. This list of robotics courses is a utopia for the same. Specially designed for absolute beginners, these robotics courses are ideal for gaining basic knowledge about the discipline.
