How will it play out? My crystal ball is broken, so I can’t say — but we (and our kids) can learn enough basic things so that we can be ready for “whatever”.
In one sense, robots of any type will create opportunities for activities such as sales, marketing, financing, etc. — that’s no different from any type of mechanical device.
What I want to deal with is the actual building & controlling of the robots. We need to know about the following areas.
Computer Programming
Mathematics
Electronics
Mechanics
Low-Level AI (How to respond to sensor inputs)
Pretty daunting. No one can know them all. Also, no one really knows what the demand will be for folks in the individual areas. So what to do?
We can study “music appreciation” type survey courses, or we can study the individual areas in depth.
If you are interested in “playing an instrument” then the survey course approach is pretty useless. Same thing here.
For that, the first area to study is “Computer Programming”. Why? It’s the basis of any robotic function — and, as an added benefit, there is a huge market for programmers in all fields. Bureau of Labor Statistics and others, say that expected growth is over 8% per year for the next 10 years.
I’ve made my living designing and building computer programs for some 50 years (started young!). My concern is that the approaches used in the schools and on the internet (not all) use the, “Hey, it’s easy, just move a few icons around, capture the dragon, gain some points” approach. The emphasis is often more on entertainment, rather than building a rigorous foundation for future development.
BTW, that’s not all bad. It can get folks interested and involved. But why not learn the programming language and the design methods properly — right from the start.
