What do you do if your robotics problem requires a creative solution?

Foster an environment that encourages innovative thinking by hosting brainstorming sessions and encouraging team members from diverse backgrounds to contribute ideas. Leverage design thinking workshops to empathize with the problem, define the challenge, ideate solutions, prototype, and test. Explore collaborations with external experts or institutions to gain fresh perspectives. Offer resources and support for rapid prototyping to quickly iterate and refine solutions. Recognize and reward creative contributions to motivate continued innovation.

Tougher the problem, more fulfilling is the solution. Difficult problems are an opportunity to innovate. Unlike the saturated field of core engineering like mechanical engineering, Robotics is a newly developing domain with a larger scope to innovate and come up with new solutions. So, more often you will encounter an unsolved challenge, which would provide you a great opportunity to solve and shine!

More often than not, new innovation stems from fusion of existing ideas. Robotics being an multi-disciplinary field, it is even more likely. Many robotics solutions today take inspiration from biology and animal kingdom. For example, the gecko inspired grippers, bird-inspired drones, crane inspired locomotion gaits. So, always keep an open mind and look for possible solutions. While performing a case study on micro-ornithopter robots, endurance was a big issue. I found that there are already existing solution that can allow harnessing power by perching onto one single AC line. I learned that through a casual interaction with my friend in Electrical Engineering. Same way, you would find solution from nature or other engineering fields.

Brain storming with lateral thinking individuals has always given rise to creative ideas...to get real innovative ideas, try to involve individual from different domain. Also a coordinator is very much required to keep the discussion on track and encourage everyone to put their thoughts.. This is applicable to all fields...

I think every successful robotics project benefits from keeping modularity in mind. For example, the end effector for a robotic arm can take on a variety of shapes depending on the task it was designed for. When you may be unsure about one shape, split your design in such a way as to make changing this shape easier. This is an especially useful way to think when employing 3D printing, where the smaller parts will print faster, or you parallelize the manufacture of several different ideas that can fit the same project.