Welcome to Learn Robotics

We built Learn Robotics because we believe learning robotics should not require a $500 robot kit, a university enrollment, or years of prerequisite coursework. All you need is a browser, curiosity, and a willingness to learn.

Today, we are officially launching the platform, and everything on it is free and open.

What Is Learn Robotics?

Learn Robotics is an interactive education platform that teaches you the fundamentals of robotics through hands-on coding and simulation. Instead of watching passive video lectures, you write real code, see it run in a live 2D playground, and build intuition by experimenting.

Every lesson follows the same philosophy: understand the math, write the code, see the result. No hand-waving, no magic black boxes.

What You Will Learn

The platform is organized into 9 progressive modules, each building on the concepts from the previous one:

1. Introduction to Robotics -- What robots are, how they sense and act, and the software that ties it all together.
2. Coordinate Systems and Transforms -- Frames of reference, rotation matrices, and homogeneous transforms. The spatial math that underpins everything.
3. Sensors and Perception -- LiDAR, cameras, IMUs, and encoders. How raw sensor data becomes useful information.
4. Kinematics -- Forward and inverse kinematics for manipulators and mobile robots. Making robots move where you want them to.
5. Control Systems -- PID control, feedforward, and state-space methods. Keeping your robot stable and responsive.
6. Path Planning -- A*, RRT, Dijkstra, and potential fields. Finding collision-free paths through an environment.
7. Localization and Mapping (SLAM) -- Particle filters, EKF-SLAM, and graph-based SLAM. Answering the question "where am I?"
8. Robot Software Architecture -- Pub/sub, real-time constraints, state machines, and how professional robot software is structured.
9. Simulation and Testing -- Why simulation matters, how physics engines work, and building repeatable test pipelines.

You do not need to complete them in order, but we recommend it if you are starting from scratch.

The Playground

The heart of the platform is the 2D Playground -- a browser-based simulation environment where you can drop in a robot, write control code, and watch it navigate in real time.

The playground supports:

• Differential drive robots with configurable wheel spacing and radius
• Simulated LiDAR with adjustable range and resolution
• Obstacle environments that you can customize or randomize
• Real-time plotting of sensor data, control signals, and trajectory
• Code editor with syntax highlighting and instant feedback

There is no installation required. Open the playground, pick a lesson, and start coding.

Developer Tools

For those who want to go deeper, we also provide a set of developer tools:

• Algorithm Visualizers -- Step through path planning algorithms frame by frame. See exactly how A* expands nodes or how RRT grows its tree.
• Transform Calculator -- Enter rotation angles and translation vectors, and see the resulting transformation matrix with a 3D visualization.
• PID Tuner -- Adjust proportional, integral, and derivative gains with sliders and watch the system response update in real time.
• URDF Viewer -- Upload a URDF file and inspect your robot's kinematic chain, joint limits, and collision geometry.

These tools are designed to build intuition. Textbooks give you equations; our tools let you feel what those equations mean.

Who Is This For?

Learn Robotics is for anyone who wants to understand how robots work at a technical level:

• Students looking for a practical supplement to their coursework
• Software engineers transitioning into robotics
• Hobbyists who want to build smarter robots at home
• Self-taught learners who prefer hands-on projects over lecture videos

We assume you know basic programming (variables, loops, functions) and are comfortable with high-school-level math. Everything else, we teach from the ground up.

What Comes Next

This launch is just the beginning. In the coming weeks, we will be publishing:

• Deep-dive tutorials on topics like PID tuning, SLAM algorithms, and robot architectures
• Project guides that walk you through building complete robotic systems in simulation
• Community challenges where you can compete on tasks like fastest maze solving or most accurate SLAM

We are also actively developing new modules on machine learning for robotics, multi-robot systems, and sim-to-real transfer.

Open and Free

Every lesson, tool, and playground environment on Learn Robotics is free to use. We believe that access to high-quality robotics education should not be gated by price.

If you find the platform useful, the best way to support us is to share it with someone who might benefit from it.

Get Started

Head to the Lessons page, pick Module 1, and write your first line of robot control code. In under ten minutes, you will have a simulated robot driving around a virtual environment -- and you will understand exactly why it moves the way it does.

Welcome to Learn Robotics. Let's build something.