2022-06-05
I study Robotics and Mechatronics Engineering. How much of 'Robotics' and 'Mechatronics' I do is up for debate. As of 5th June 2022, I have finished 3 semester's worth of courses. I have had a sudden urge to write something about them this late at night.
Albeit the title, this is not to be meant a thoughtful or serious review of the courses I have taken and/or of their efficacy. This is simply my personal experience, how I have liked (or disliked, in some cases) them, what the syllabus had promised to teach me and what I was able to take away. For each course, I will first try to have a neutral point of view and then be biased and (mostly) rant. And to add yet another disclaimer, if I am saying some mean stuff about a course, my opinion is not affected by my performance in the course in any way. I have always tried to separate academia from education, which is worth having its own separate essay.
The numbers follow the pattern Year-Semester.
12th grade thermodynamics. Eases you into the world of machines and engines. Basics of heat transfers and stuff. Then some example cases like internal combustion engines, automobiles and refrigerators.
Meh. Nothing too fancy, but definitely an important foundational block.
Number systems, Boolean logic, basic I/O devices, parts of a computer. A fair bit about microprocessors and their structure. Some basic stuff on computer networks and the internet.
Meh again. I expected it to be a bit more detailed or include some higher level abstractions. Course felt a bit dragged out. Although the course teacher was great. Maybe one of the best, if I had to say. Exam was even more dumbed down. You could cut down the course by 80% and still have all the topic relevant to the subject (RME).
Again, most of 12th grade calculus with some additional theorems thrown in. Tries to build a solid foundation for calculus, which is integral (hehe) to a lot of courses in future.
Nothing really worth writing about except that it is super important. Liked it.
Mechanics, waves, relativity and radioactivity. 12th grade topics again with some complex problems.
Physics was interesting to me since very long ago and this course was not different. Online classes sucked out fun from every class I had but the in-person classes of this course were enjoyable imo. Yet somehow got bad grades. Still love physics though.
Basic chemistry that might help in future endeavours. Some 12th grade stuff. Some heavy emphasis on physical chemistry and molecular structures.
I never liked chemistry. Never will. Relieved hoping I would never have to encounter this subject again. Course is important though I think.
Mechanical drawing in first half, CAD in second half using SolidWorks. Mostly simple shapes and objects. Introduces to the designing and manufacturing pipeline.
Enjoyed the CAD part. Maybe I like it better than polymodeling. I can definitely see a world where if I don't feel comfortable with programming, I focus full time on this.
This probably marks the end of familiar grounds. In the coming future, I would face some uncomfortable scenarios as more and more semesters progress.
Electrical + Mechanical + Fluid system, control systems, sensors, controllers, signal conditioning, PLC and finally some studies on mechatronics systems. One of the core courses.
I will be honest, I did not expect this even when my subject literally has the word "Mechatronics" in it. Never got around to understand this. Didn't help that my course teacher also felt — only in my personal opinion — somewhat unapproachable and incomprehensible. I thought Robotics was the only focus and I would be thrown in higher level hardware programming, which is another evidence of my stupidity. But making the actual system that holds everything together should also be an important topic and I understand why this is needed. Massive L for me though. Need to retake this. Probably one of my least liked courses. I do not have a feeling that I will understand it anytime soon.
Basic EEE stuff. Circuits, Laws and Theorems. Semiconductors and Transistors. Touches basic electrical circuits and components and their nature.
Leaning a bit on the liked side. Yet again somehow got a bad grade.
Starter programming topics, pointers and files in C. Everyone knows you have to know how to program for robotics.
Ironic. Out of every course in my whole 4-year plan, this was the only course I was sure nothing could stop me from having perfect scores. But fortune did not favor. I do not know why to this date. Just disappointed. Would never blame myself for this one.
Matrices, Linear systems, Vector spaces, Linear Transformations. Linear algebra is at the heart of robotics. Simply not possible without it. Used extensively for both hardware and software.
Easily the best course I have taken to this date. The course teacher was phenomenal but I mostly learned from the greater WWW. Indebted to 3b1b and Linear Algebra Done Right for life. I don't remember the last time I was this excited while learning somthing new. This is one of the few topics — and not just academically — that I think I have a firm grasp on. But it seems to be a pattern for my grades to be inversely proportional to my expertise on the course except when I have no expertise. I just don't care at this point.
Basically what the Business Studies discipline in our country covers in 12th grade. Standard high school accounting stuff. Probably to get the students straightened in the business side.
Not necessarily liked it but I also dont have negative feelings. There was quite a lot of ground to cover but I think everything was really easy to understand and trivial. Everything came down to just identifying what was what and sometimes balancing sheets.
Not bad if I just exclude Mechatronics. That is a lifetime scar. But the grades for programming and linear algebra were shockers for me. This made me completely lose hope for academics.
Anyway, Woohoo! Second Year!
Measuring everything in a system e.g. pressure, energy, power, temperature. And then working with errors and statistical analysis. A course core to the subject.
Didn't like it. I felt this is the younger sibling to 1201. Partly because it is taught by the same teacher and partly because some part of it still goes over my head. I don't know if that is due to the teacher or just the complexity of the subject.
Flip-Flops, Adder, Counter, Decoders, Memory devices. The 8086 microprocessor. Very very very important topics. This is basically the building blocks of electronics.
I like the subject and I had a good headstart because of nand2tetris although I maybe lost the lead at some point. But as with probably most of the courses in this semster, not a good exam.
Mechanics, Statics, Friction, Kinetics. The parts of mechanics that are very practical for engineers. I do think the topic selection was very good and beneficial for anyone wanting to dive straight into real-world problems.
Liked it after finally getting around to studying. I missed one of the in-course exams, and attending the other one net me a total of 3.5/30. So I basically had to sit for an examination out of 70 while the everyone else is doing 100. Exam was pretty good. But I don't know if it is good enough. Truly unfortunate.
This title is the most self explanatory out of them all. Using more than one variable allows us to express more complex terms and scenarios akin to the actual world.
Not bad, not terrible. Math is not my strongest subject but I don't despise it. Tried to understand it. But what I learned the hard way is, you need to memorize the maths if you want good grades. I am sure there are students who really know it all by heart who do not need to memorize and can solve whatever is thrown into them by applying the fundamental concepts. This should be the case for an ideal student but again, I tried. I still do think I won't get a bad grade but no one knows.
Microeconomics and Macroeconomics. Nothing strictly related to robotics but instead familiarizes with economic concepts and strategies to assist in the real world.
Liked it. A strong thumbs up for my second favorite. Made me think about why I hadn't studied Business Administration instead. The concepts came to me naturally although all of it was hard to keep track of just because of the overwhelming size of the syllabus. Exam was also fine. Won't say anything about the grades.
Hot Garbage. A lot of stuff seemed to be just some iteration of different economics topics.
I don't really see the point. Might as well have handed us some essays on how society and technology interact with each other. Feels like some people, who didn't have much on their plate, got together and decided to delude people into thinking this subject was necessary. Then they wrote some books with seemingly useless theories and information just to fill out the pages where they deliberately use complex and compound sentences to make the reader believe they are conveying some very important information. I know a thing or two about English and English Writing. I know how this works. Sentences don't make sense! Although I have to give props to those guys. They found a way to get money out of useless trash.
Finally. The worst semester I have had yet. Other than not working hard enough for my studies, I dealt with some personal stuff throughout this semester and went into the finals unmotivated and mostly depressed. This is definitely going to affect my grades.
And at last, I have made up my mind about some stuff and remedies. It only took me almost half a year. I hope to start the next semester with a fresh mindset and a healthy plan with my goal being to have a good balance of motivation and discipline. I also hope I will be able to stick to them. There are some things we can not change in life, and they need acceptance. I wish nothing but good luck to everyone going through the same stuff.