Ep. 14: Zero to H.I.R.O.: The Path to Becoming a Full-Stack Mechatronics Engineer

Welcome to Episode 14 of The Robo Success Podcast, where robotics meets real-world engineering and innovation.

In this episode, we explore what it takes to build the next generation of robotics engineers and why hands-on hardware experience remains critical in an increasingly AI-driven industry.

Our guest, Joseph Casebeer, Founder and CEO of Takamori Robot, shares insights about his journey into robotics, the development of the Hero educational robotics kit, and why understanding embedded systems and hardware fundamentals will remain essential as AI transforms engineering.

Guest: Joseph Casebeer

Host: Jesica Chavez
Co-host: Andy Diepen

Learn more about Takamori Robot: https://www.takamorirobot.com/

🔍 What you'll hear:

• How Joseph's early experience with animatronics sparked his path into robotics.
• Why Hero uses a Raspberry Pi Pico and microcontroller-based design to teach real robotics fundamentals.
• The transition from graphical programming to writing raw code and understanding how hardware actually works.
• Why personal projects and hands-on experience can be more valuable than grades alone when building an engineering career.
• Why AI can accelerate coding, but engineers still need deep technical knowledge to debug, optimize, and solve hardware-specific problems.

Building a robotics project is more than an exercise in learning to code. It is an opportunity to understand how software, electronics, actuators, and physical systems interact—and how those systems fail. As AI makes software development increasingly accessible, the engineers who understand what is happening underneath the code will remain critical to building reliable robots.

More at: www.robo-success.com

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