In this article, we’ve listed only the best online Robotics courses training to be taken by anyone. We’ve looked into multiple MOOCs, compared them, and concluded that these are the only robotics courses with the best curriculum.
The job market for Robotics is expected to grow by 4 to 6 percent by the next decade. This is a wonderful opportunity for you to choose this career path right now because of the growth in the Job market.
To help you begin this path of Robotics engineering or enhance your existing knowledge, we’ve listed the best online robotics course for beginners. While there is no such thing as the best robotics courses globally, these are the best out there.
Enrolling in any of these courses will pave your path to becoming Robotics Engineer. According to the 2018 job data, the median salary of a Robotics Engineer is $96.980 USD.
TL;DR | In a Hurry?
If you don’t have much time, use the below links to find the best online course to learn Robotics. Rest assured, we only recommend the best certification course for Robotics:
–Robotics Specialization by Coursera is a great choice for beginners to explore Robotics.
–Modern Robotics is an intermediate level; hence engineering students or students with enough experience in Robotics can enroll in this.
–Robotics by ColumbiaX is another great course to learn Robotics. It covers a wide array of topics with in-depth concepts.
–Robotics Software Engineer by Udacity covers teachings on programming a robot.
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Best Online Robotics Course for Beginners
In case you’re wondering which course is best for Robotics, don’t worry. We have come up with the best course for robotics to learn online.
1. Robotics Specialization – Coursera
This Robotics specialization online course is developed by the University of Pennsylvania and available on the Coursera platform. Here you’ll learn from the building blocks of Robotics that are necessary to begin your career as a Robotics Engineer. You’ll learn the concepts of robot movement and flight, how robots recognize the surroundings, navigate different terrains, move by avoiding obstacles, etc.
The best part of this course is that you don’t need any prior knowledge of any technical skills, and hence it is one of the best robotics courses for beginners to learn from scratch. This specialization training course consists of 5 courses and one capstone project. The five courses that come with this specialization are Aerial Robotics, Computational Motion Planning, Mobility, Perception, and Estimation and Learning.
Key takeaways of this course:
- It features several aspects of Robotics from the ground up with ease.
- Students from any background can take this course to learn robotics online from scratch.
- The course starts with the Aerial Robotics chapter, which is an exciting topic to learn.
- You will be exposed to real-world robotics examples and possible challenges in this rapid growth of the drone industry.
- It also includes chapters on designing robot bodies, so it has essential mobility in robots.
- Teach the robot how it perceives its surroundings via a camera.
- The final capstone project length is 6 weeks, giving you an ample amount of time to complete the project.
So far, over 29k students have enrolled in this course that has an above 4-star rating. Once enrolled, you can complete this course in about 7 months.
2. Modern Robotics: Mechanics, Planning, and Control Specialization – Coursera
Another great course to become Robotics Master is by taking the Modern Robotics Specialization course. It teaches some of the essential concepts in modern robotics, such as dynamics, motion planning, kinematics, and controlling robot arms and mobile robots. This course is an intermediate level where students are expected to know linear algebra, calculus, derivatives, and a little bit of programming experience.
Students who are familiar with the above math topics can quickly scale up their learning. Also, it will be easier for them to write the code for robots. Every student who signs up for this course will experience authentic robot programming with industry robot manipulators. The curriculum of this specialization consists of 6 courses, all to be taken in the same order.
Key takeaways of this course:
- You will kick off your learning by beginning with the foundations of robot motion.
- After robot motion, you’ll begin learning the role of kinematics in the field of robotics.
- Get trained on the algorithms for forward dynamics and inverse dynamics.
- Learn the key concepts of robot motion planning and control.
- Incudes a final capstone project course, where you will write a code to control mobile.
Since it is an intermediate level, students who are pursuing or completing Mechanical Engineering will find this course helpful. You can complete the course in about 6 months.
3. Building Arduino robots and devices – Coursera
This course is the easiest course to learn Robotics online from a very foundational level. To take this course, you will have to buy the listed material from the Arduino store. Once you have all the necessary components, you will be taught assembling parts. Next comes the programming part, which you will do on the Arduino platform.
If you’re new to robotics, then this will mark your introduction to the Robotics journey. By the end of this course, you can create devices that can read data from a series of sensors and then transmit it to your PC. The process to achieve this involves studying components, design, assembling, diagnostics, and coding. All these concepts are trained here in this course.
Key takeaways of this course:
- Begin your journey in Robotics by learning to build a robot from scratch.
- It doesn’t require any special knowledge to sign up for this course.
- The course also has a DIY section which is very crucial for beginners.
- Connect your built device to the network and establish communication.
- You learn to create a step motor, and by using it, one can perform specific actions.
The entire course is 17 hours long; depending on the speed of learning, you can finish this course in a week or two. More than 67k students have signed up for this course.
4. Robotics by ColumbiaX – edX
If you’re looking for an instructor-led course to teach you Robotics, this course is best suitable. The syllabus of this course starts by providing Introduction to Robotics. Robotics is the science of building devices that interacts with the real world. The best robot is the one that performs its tasks tirelessly, precisely, and repeatedly. Some robots can be fine-tuned to enhance their performance.
This course on edX is designed and developed by Columbia University and is part of the bigger MicroMasters Program of Artificial Intelligence. The students will use the open-source Robot Operating System. The instructor will guide students with clear explanations to the students. The prerequisite of this Robotics course is linear algebra, calculus, and the basics of programming. The projects on these courses will be done using Python programming language with an optional C++.
Key takeaways of this course:
- You will be trained to plan complete robot systems.
- Learn how you can manipulate robot arms with forward and inverse kinematics, differential kinematics, and Kinematic chains.
- Become proficient in developing applications for existing and future robots.
- Learn to represent 2D and 3D spatial relationships and homogeneous coordinates.
- You will be trained to program and navigate mobile robots so that the control of robots is achieved.
Robotics students who sign up for this course will have 10 weeks to complete the course. More than 68k students have taken this course. This is one of the best robotics certification programs.
5. Robotics Software Engineer – Udacity
By enrolling in this course, you’ll have taken the first step to become a Robotics Software Engineer. Here you’ll build several hands-on projects to acquire essential skills such as Gazebo, ROS, Mapping, Localization, SLAM, Path Planning, and Navigation. The necessary prerequisite for this Robotics Nanodegree is C++, probability, calculus, linear algebra, and basic Linux commands.
This is a fantastic course for every ROS aspirant to start their robotics career. Every topic is very well structured and explained with animations. Along with the rich learning syllabus from Udacity, you are also entitled to resume service and mentoring. If you’re facing any kind of problem during your course, mentors will always be there to guide you.
Key takeaways of this course:
- Provides a brief overview of the Introduction to Robotics to help you get familiar with the tools. This is necessary for you to succeed in this Robotics Program.
- Using Gazebo, you can learn to simulate your first robotic environment. The Gazebo is the most commonly used simulation software for robotics.
- Learn to manage ROS packages in a project or write ROS Nodes in C++.
- Create Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) with ROS packages and C++ programming language.
- Learn the concepts of navigation algorithms and path planning.
The estimated time to complete this course is 4 months. Udacity offers great learning content with exciting features.
6. Robotics Foundations l – Robot Modeling
This is a self-paced training course to learn the Robotics foundation for modeling robot manipulators. If you’re not aware, the full scope of robotics is the crossroad between many subjects such as electronics, mechanics, computing, signal processing, mathematical modeling, and control engineering. Since there is no predefined skillset to take this course, anyone can start learning robotics.
The complete Robotics Foundation is split into two models, and the other one is Robotics Foundation II – Robot Control. It is developed by the Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II, the oldest university in Europe. This foundation model covers robot modeling. The training material covers several chapters on kinematics which is the essential topic.
Key takeaways of this course:
- Learn about the workings of advanced robotics and industrial robotics.
- You’ll learn the fundamentals of statics, kinematics, inverse kinematics, and differential kinematics—an important topic in the field of robotics.
- One of the best recommended online courses to learn the basics of Robotics.
- You’re taught Jacobian, which is the fundamental tool to describe analyze redundancy, differential kinematics, determine singular configurations, and service statics model.
Over 10k students have signed up for this course to learn the fundamentals of Robotics. The approximate time to complete this robotics class is 8 weeks.
7. Robotics Foundations ll – Robot Control
This is the second Model of foundations of Robotics, the sequel of the above course. The focus of this course is to teach you the planning and control of mobile robots and robot manipulators. In this wide framework of robotics, control and modeling play a very basic role yet essential – from industrial robotics to advanced robotics.
If you would like to control your robot, then this course is for you. You can learn to control your robot in free space or in motion. The cool thing about this course is that you learn to control robots in space with Operational Space Control. In this field, you face a common motion control problem, and this is tackled with the trajectory tracking task.
Key takeaways of this course:
- Study the operational space motion control and joint space strategies.
- Topics on different control techniques are taught, such as direct and indirect force control and visual control.
- Learn trajectory planning to solve the motion control problem.
- Learn algorithms on parameter identification.
The duration to complete this course is 3 months, where you’ve to at least spend 8-16 hours per week. Like the first part, this too is a self-paced course.
8. Electricity & electronics – Robotics, learn by building – Udemy
In this Robotics online course, you will learn by building robots. Take the robotics course and begin your career in robotics. This course stands out as unique among others mentioned as you learn by doing practical tasks. It is created by Ian Juby, a top instructor on Udemy. He has created a total of 3 Robotics courses, and this is the first one. The second is Digital Electronics: Robotics, learn by building module II, and the third is Robotic Drives & Physics: Robotics, learn by building III.
To get started, you need to have skills in basic math and a few electronics tools. You’ll learn why you need all these tools in the first section of the course. Here you’ll learn to build electronic circuits, soldering, and basic analog electronics. This course is perfect for those who want to gain some experience in building robots and ultimately pursue a degree in engineering or a degree in robotics.
Key takeaways of this course:
- Learn about different electrical components while building robotics.
- This course is frequently updated to keep up with the latest updates on Robotics.
- Learn what a heatsink is and the purpose of using it.
- Control servo motors with the help of a controller circuit.
- Provides a list of components to be purchased to proceed with the learning.
This course is one of the bestseller courses in Robotics on the Udemy platform. Over 21k students have enrolled in this course.
9. Digital Electronics: Robotics, learn by building module II – Udemy
This course is the continuation of the first module mentioned earlier in this article. Module 1 has all the necessary lessons required to take this course. Here in this course, you will build digital electronic circuits and program microcontrollers such as Arduino and PIC.
The course focuses on the diverse field of Robotics. Compared to module 1, you will further enhance your skills. By the end of the course, you will have enough knowledge to build motors and program them. Once you complete this, you can take module 3, which focuses on Robotic drives and physics.
Key takeaways of this course:
- Learn about analog to digital conversion and digital to analog conversion.
- Use a microcontroller and build electronic circuits to be used in robots.
- Get trained in programming your microcontrollers such as Arduino or PIC.
- You’ll learn to use PWM control to control DC and servo motors.
The total duration of the course is 13 hours long, and you may need 2-4 weeks to complete it.
Summary: Best Robotics Certification Course
These are all robotics programs available for you to learn online. We compiled this list of the best online robotics course for beginners to ease your burden on searching for the best. The Robotics field is very bright, and it keeps growing every year.
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