The Complete Guide to Becoming A Robotics Technician

Chapter 1: What Does a Robotics Technician Actually Do?

Let's clear up the first misconception right now: a robotics technician is not the person who designs the robot from scratch and it's not the person who writes the complex artificial intelligence that makes it decide where to go. That's an engineer's job. You are the person who makes sure the robot actually works, day after day, in the real world. And that is a far more hands-on, varied, and in-demand job than most people realize.

The Core of the Job: Maintenance and Troubleshooting

At its heart, the role is about three things: installation, maintenance, and troubleshooting. A good day at work is when a machine is humming along and you're doing preventative checks. A stressful day is when the line is down, production is stopped, and the plant manager is standing behind you watching you figure out why a robotic arm stopped moving ten minutes before the end of a shift.

You'll spend a large portion of your time doing routine maintenance. This sounds mundane, but it's the most important thing you do. A typical preventative maintenance task might involve checking the oil levels in a robotic arm's gearbox, cleaning dust off of its sensors, checking the torque on its mounting bolts, and replacing the batteries in its backup power unit. You might also be swapping out worn-out suction cups on a robotic pick-and-place end effector - the tool at the end of the arm that actually grabs things. These