Why Learn Robotics Now
We are entering a new era where embodied AI technologies are coming to the forefront. Researchers and engineers are focusing more on real-world applications of their advanced technologies in AI agentic systems and robotics. Hugging Face, Google DeepMind, Andrej Karpathy and other experts are paying more attention to robotics, bringing us closer to a future where robots are integrated to daily life.
Here are 7 sources that will help you to master robotics and keep up with the times:
Best Free Robotics Courses for Beginners
QUT Robot Academy offers free masterclasses and single lessons on different subjects, such as Computer Vision, 3D Vision, Hardware, Math, Spatial Math and many others, including lessons for beginners.
The Construct has many free video courses on Robotics, including Python 3, C++, Linux for Robotics, and ROS 2 basics.
Coursera provides several Robotics courses, where you can enroll for free:
Robotics Specialization by University of Pennsylvania for beginners where you will learn how to program a robot to perform a variety of movements.
Modern Robotics, Course 1: Foundations of Robot Motion and Modern Robotics: Mechanics, Planning, and Control Specialization by Northwestern University for intermediate level to learn important concepts in modern robotics.
Introduction to Robotics with Webots Specialization for beginner level for learning robot design and discrete planning of trajectories and behaviors for robots.
Check other Robotics courses on Coursera here.
Intermediate and Advanced Robotics Resources
edX courses are available for free for some period of time (about 2 months), so you can intensively learn:
RWTHx: Introduction to Robotic Programming is an introduction to parametric robot control using KUKA|prc for customizing, simulating, and optimizing robot code in Rhino3d/Grasshopper. It includes lectures, examples, and tutorials.
ETHx: Autonomous Mobile Robots provides the basic concepts and algorithms for development of mobile robots that act autonomously in complex environments.
FedericaX: Robotics Foundations I - Robot Modeling covers robotics foundations, focusing on robot modeling.
LeRobot, a free tutorial with videos by Hugging Face on how to build real world robots. Beginners and experts can learn how to assemble, configure, and calibrate the robot, record and visualize data, train and evaluate a policy.
Hands-On Tutorials: Build a Real Robot
Unity Robotics Hub is a central repository for tools, tutorials, resources, and documentation for robotic simulation in Unity.
How to Build a Robot From Scratch is a step by step tutorial on how to model a robot that can be remotely controlled using your smartphone. It’s a free part of a course from Udemy. Video and code are also provided.
How to Choose the Right Robotics Course
The best robotics course depends on your current skills and what you want to build.
If you’re a complete beginner: start with Python, basic math, and introductory robotics. QUT Robot Academy, The Construct, and beginner Coursera courses are good starting points.
If you already know programming: move into robot motion, control, perception, and ROS 2 through Modern Robotics, ETHx, or more advanced courses from The Construct.
If you want to work with AI and robotics: focus on computer vision, reinforcement learning, robot learning, and embodied AI. Hugging Face’s LeRobot is especially useful for learning how modern robot policies are trained on real-world data.
If you want hands-on experience: prioritize courses that include simulation or physical robots. Unity Robotics Hub can help with simulation, while LeRobot walks through assembling a robot, collecting data, training a policy, and evaluating it.
You don’t need to learn everything before building :) A practical path is Python → robotics fundamentals → ROS 2 → simulation → computer vision and robot learning → a real robot project.
