What are the most effective ways for Robotics professionals to continue their education?

Online communities and forums are a great way to keep up to date with new trends and continue learning. - By actively participating in discussions and asking questions, you can tap into the collective expertise of the community. - They are good resources for troubleshooting technical issues, especially new ones that show up with time. - Forums are also a good resource for discovering new projects/repositories that are often up to date with industry trends. - Finally they also provide networking opportunities with like-minded individuals

ICRA is one of the top conferences in robotics but it is not an online event and I would suggest not to attend to an online version of it as it doesn’t give the same value of being in person. Moreover it might be expensive, if you are not an IEEE member, and might target more a research engineer profile than a production engineer. It is definitely the place you want to be to find out the newest developments (and I recommend to attend), and a place to be to attract talented prospective engineers, but it is not the place of you want to train your engineering skills in robotics. I believe there is a bit of a void here as, beyond RosCon, I am not aware of any technical conference aimed at learning engineering practices in robotics

Robocup is useful primarily for students (high school or university) and possibly for academic researchers. The competition has the potential to become like Formula 1 for robotics but it is not here yet. If you want to develop your own hobby project, you can define something that either leverages open source simulators or leans on rapid prototyping (both mechanical and electronics, like arduinos) as it is a better way to learn. If you do engage in such a project, be sure to be part of a network of people with similar interests. You might not have all the skills to develop a robot from the ground up and teaming up with others, or using standard robot platforms or software to begin with, might be a easier entry point

Projects offer invaluable learning opportunities in Robotics. Contributing to open source projects or participating in collaborative projects with others allows you to gain practical, hands-on experience in developing software, algorithms, and robotics systems. This lets you learn new techniques and gain a deeper understanding of real-world robotics challenges. They also provide an opportunity to gain exposure to new diverse frameworks and tools, helping you to stay up to date with technology. Projects also foster creativity and innovation encouraging new and novel approaches in robotics.

Encuentra un motivo por el cual estudiar, puede que no lo sepas al principio, pero cuando mires hacia atrás una vez habiéndolo encontrado descubrirás que todo encaja.

Using online materials are great, but if you are really serious about learning, you want to dive deep and you can afford to work and study part-time, consider enrolling in an academic course. This will give you the basement on concepts that are otherwise too hard or too time consuming to learn alone. Knowledge of foundational mathematics and theory of robotics can give you an extra resource if you need to stretch over tasks normally difficult to reach for a non robotic engineer, such as robot control or elements where you need to handle mathematics in your code (eg transformations). Those tasks do pop up and taking them without the right foundations might produce suboptimal results.

Learning never stops, even when you're working. Online courses on Coursera, Udemy, and other platforms offer a ton of robotics-related coursework. Doing a project or implementing a research paper that interests you is another great way to learn. Contributing to open-source projects on Github can help you understand collaboration with different people more effectively. Attending conference keynotes can also help you learn new things in robotics.