A 1980s toy robot arm inspired modern robotics

I'm impressed Hiroyuki Watanabe was only 24 years old when he invented/led this.

> “I didn’t have a period where I studied engineering professionally. Instead, I enrolled in what Japan would call a technical high school that trains technical engineers, and I actually [entered] the electrical department there,” he told me.

I think this approach is sorely needed again, in the US at least.

The grass was so green back then. Today leaves are brown and there is a patch of snow on the ground.

I went to a technical high school for software engineering in Slovenia and it was fantastic. We learned C/C++, SQL, relational data modeling, basics of OOP, assembly for microcontrollers, IT administrator stuff, networking/internet, some basics of web development, a little about operating systems.

I did go to study CS after high school (despite getting a job midway through my senior year), but I still draw on the things I learned in high school every day. It was great. Gave me a lot of practical foundations.

There was a math and science school in my state but it was a boarding school, and that did not seem like a good idea for me.

We have technical high schools for all kinds of subjects all over the place. Our community colleges are also doing everything HN thinks they should be doing, and they started like thirty years ago.