Robotics Is More Than Roboticists
Learning and innovating together across disciplines.
By Kari Wilhelm
I spent last week in Boston visiting one of our Amazon Robotics locations, and it got me thinking about something I heard last year at a Robotics conference that really stuck with me: “Not everyone in robotics is a roboticist.” To me, that meant, “You can be valuable here.”
Jumping into this new domain last year, I was impressed by the depth in each field that it takes to make robotics work. As Software Engineers, we generally learn a domain to apply our craft to. For example, in the past I’ve learned about how hotel reservation and travel systems work, how trains work, etc. Robotics is not a single domain. I quickly realized just how interdisciplinary it is, and that it’s probably the most diverse field I’ve worked in so far. Every day, I team up with people from all sorts of backgrounds: hardware and mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, network engineering, systems engineering, research and applied sciences, computer vision and AI domains, industrial design, and, of course, software engineering (my own background).
Among the robotics experts, there’s many different specializations. In our organization some focus on manipulation robotics, others are specialized in mobile robotics. And — fun fact, not everyone in the field started out in robotics.
What Makes Interdisciplinary Teams Work
What I found many people in this space do have in common is a love of learning, teaching, and a genuine excitement to build something impactful. To build together, we rely on knowing how to bring our expertise together. This is my favorite work energy — infectious enthusiasm!
The magic happens when diverse expertise converges on complex problems. Your background becomes a lens that sees solutions others might miss. The mechanical engineer spots the physical constraint the software engineer didn’t consider. The AI researcher sees the learning opportunity the systems engineer approached as a rules problem.
Finding Your Place in Any Field
The “you can be valuable here” realization applies beyond robotics. When entering any new domain:
- Bring your expertise confidently - Your existing skills translate in ways you might not immediately see
- Embrace the learning curve - Everyone started somewhere, even the domain experts
- Look for intersection opportunities - The most interesting problems often live at the boundaries between disciplines
- Ask questions freely - Your outsider perspective can illuminate assumptions insiders take for granted
The interdisciplinary nature of complex technical work means there’s always room for different backgrounds and ways of thinking. Your unique combination of experiences is exactly what makes you valuable to the team.
Walking through that Boston lab, surrounded by robots and brilliant people from every engineering discipline imaginable, I was reminded that the best technical work happens when we combine our different ways of seeing problems.
