I’m looking for a side gig and I require time flexibility. I also need a relatively quick training period. According to GPT this is one of the best options.
Does this track in your experience?
I’m based in the UK if that’s important context
In two years I will graduate with a research masters degree in Control Engineering. This is a degree designed to prepare the student for a PhD. So I will gain at least some research skills.
I picked control engineering because it seems to be a field where there’s a huge pool of undiscovered high value “inventions” I could build with it. For example, Model Predictive Control was originally invented for the chemical process industry, it later enabled reusable launchers and reduced the cost of space launch by orders of magnitude. I don’t think anyone at the inception of MPC could have ever saw that coming.
There’s a whole forest of advanced control techniques that live almost entirely in academia. My theory is that the “high value applications” just haven’t found them yet because they exist in domains where there’s very little awareness of control engineering. And control systems experts tends not to be aware of the domains or have sufficient expertise to see the value. There seems to be growing awareness of this issue in the field.
I’m lucky enough to have sufficient passive income that, if I wanted to, I could move to a low cost of living country like Georgia and have half of my passive income as surplus after cost of living to allocate to any R&D project I want in controls. Controls research is mostly simulation and modelling work that only requires a computer, plus maybe a little bit of hardware which shouldn’t cost too much. By my current understanding, the additional benefit of funding beyond what I have available diminishes quickly, so there’s no financial incentive to join an institutional research group. My goal is to eventually discover a niche “application” for some controls technique that currently live mostly in academia, analogous to what reusable rockets is for MPC, and build a TRL3-4 prototype and then try to attract external funding. I’m not looking to advance the field of controls itself, I only aim to take what already exists and duct tape it to something niche that needs it.
What I worry about is the lack of a network of research peers and lack of PhD level training. Originally I planned to do the PhD, but I estimate my chance of getting into a PhD program at about 10%, and it will also cost me 5 years of my life. If you’re wondering why im not considering just getting a job at a startup or engineering firm, trust me I have already considered that and it is just no longer possible. I also want control over the direction of my research which isn’t really possible at a job.
I don’t know to what extent a lack of a network of research peers would impede me compared to someone integrated into academic institutions. And when and if I do eventually end up with a high value prototype, I don’t know whether I will need the PhD qualification to attract funding or if a good prototype demonstration would be enough.
If you work in R&D or controls, I’d love to have some advice please. Am I underestimating the level of research skill needed or workload for one person?
I fit all the descriptions of an INTP except that I don’t really start projects.
Usually I have an interest, or curiosity about an idea, but it’s always seen as a “side thing”, which means it is to be put on hold until I finish the main thing, which almost never happens. If it weren’t for that, I’d probably fit the description of starting lots of projects and finishing none.
I also don’t really start projects unless I can envision how it all works out in the end, which seems more INTJ.
A couple of weeks ago there were discussions on this sub about AI researchers reinventing what is essentially control techniques.
MPC was originally invented for chemical processing, but later unlocked reusable space launch vehicles. I don’t think anyone back in the 70s saw landing rockets vertically as a potential application. Yet in hindsight it’s almost obvious.
How much of an adoption gap do you think is out there? How many more equivalents of “reusable rocket” are out there unaware of controls?
Are we at a point where there isn’t much left to “modernise”? No more nature to conquer?
I’m gathering a list of all known applications of advanced control techniques in industry to see if there’s a pattern. Then I’m gonna try to use the pattern to infer new potential applications to work on.
In the west the norm up until recently is that when the child becomes an adult or graduate from university, the family no longer have any obligation, social or cultural or legal, to give the child any money. And it is shameful for the child to even ask. Recently this has loosened up a little due to the economy but the cultural root is still there.
I just watched a Japanese movie where the adult children function as merely additional sources of income to the family account but often ask for large sums of money from mum and dad who still work. They also live in the same household as mum and dad. Is this normal in Japan?
This is my crackpot idea.
Think of the double slit experiment.
It changes under observation because prior to being observed, it was the subject!
The more you are observed, the more pressure exerted upon you by other subjects to be less of a subject and more of an object. In order to be a subject, there must be a possibility of choice, ambiguity, agency. An object has no agency but a subject does.
Prior to being observed, the photon probably had a tiny tiny amount of consciousness!
So usually, somebody analyses a market or existing products, and concludes “hmm it would be really nice if it was possible to make a product that can do this new thing X”. Then this problem gets passed to engineers and scientists and they get paid to find novel solution Y.
I’m in control engineering. In my field there are plenty of examples of this: Wright brothers wants to be able to control their plane - invents 3 axis control. Northrop Grumman wants a plane with no vertical stabiliser - active yaw control with split drag elevons. SpaceX wants reusable rockets - Uses MPC to control trajectory during descent. Fusion power is one neat control system away from plasma stability and free energy.
In each case, the use of a fancy controls technique unlocks a brand new capability or order of magnitude increase in important performance metric. The wright brothers literally unlocked flight. The B2 unlocked effective stealth. SpaceX reduced the cost of space launch by orders of magnitudes and increased the payload ratio because they can now afford to fit more of those expensive engines per rocket because they don’t get wasted after each launch.
I ask this question because I want to know if there had been any research at all on how to systematically solve the reverse problem: I have fancy new solution Y, find all possible problems X that Y could solve that unlocks huge value?
Control engineering is full of these fancy solutions but they rarely make it out of academia for some reason. How do I find the high value problems that gets solved by Nonlinear control, robust control etc?
I’m doing a research masters in control engineering. My backup plan in case I don’t get into a PhD afterwards is to setup shop in a studio flat in a cheap city like Hartlepool. I have some passive income and in Hartlepool I can self fund some R&D in my field which actually doesn’t require that much money given it’s mostly software and embedded boards.
My idea is to try to find potential applications for advanced control techniques that are only found in academia but not so widespread in industry. My reasoning is that nobody knew MPC could enable reusable rockets before they tried it. Maybe the same is true for robust control nonlinear control etc.
Do I need a PhD or prior work experience to be successful applying for grants? Or is anything possible as long as I have a sufficiently valuable prototype?
Do they tend to rise in the hierarchy or become independent from it or no correlation or something else?
By smarter I mean by the conventional definition: academic performance at the same level of effort, fluid intelligence, g etc
So we know 95% of controllers are just PID, and fancy things like MPC, non-linear, bang bang, learning based control etc live mostly in academia.
Is this because there’s diminishing performance or cost benefits when you use advanced control techniques over PID, or is it simply because not a lot of people know how to tune anything other than PID?
I’m in control engineering. I have a theory that controls is full of theoretical techniques that have undiscovered but extremely high value applications. Reusable rockets was fundamentally a breakthrough in controls (MPC). Due to that, they are able to economically fit large numbers of rocket engines in one rocket, which boosted the thrust to weight ratio and therefore payload, and reduced launch costs by an order of magnitude. However, MPC wasn’t invented specifically for rockets.
My idea is this:
I have some passive income. It’s not enough to live off of in the UK, but if I move to a low cost of living country, I could easily have half of it leftover after rent and necessities. I can self fund my R&D operation. All I really need is a computer and maybe an electronics workbench.
I will then try to find the equivalent of reusable rockets for each niche control algorithm in academia. I will do this systematically. If I find a good high value application, I patent it and build a TRL3 prototype. Then I take that to some VC and turn it into a startup. I could do this for years, possibly decades.
Even if I don’t hit gold in the end, that’s fine. I like doing this anyways and I’m financially safe. My main concern is that if it takes too long before I hit gold, it’s gonna look weird af to a VC. I’m basically a new grad, I’ll be approaching a VC a decade after school with no official work experience. The “R&D company” has one employee and was funded by passive income for a decade with no trading or fundraising activity. I don’t know how much that matters. How good would a demonstrator have to be to outweigh that?
The reason J people prefer closure over leaving options open is because they tend to have a very clear idea of “which direction is positive”. They also are keenly aware that leaving it open risks moving things in the negative direction.
This is especially true with social hierarchies. Imagine a group of people. Maybe at the beginning, most people are egalitarian. They don’t know anything about each other so they treat any person as an equal by default.
As soon as even one person starts putting themself above others, the person immediately next to them have a dilemma: do I continue treating this person as an equal or should I try to one up this person so I don’t end up inferior?
And this is the important part. Most of the time, if you try to treat a hierarchical minded person as an equal, they will treat you as an inferior, which would signal to the group that you are inferior. Which means you have no choice but to push back.
J people are very aware of this and are constantly wary of forces trying to push them down on various types of hierarchies.
P people on the other hand think if you treat them as equal, they’ll treat you as an equal, and even if they don’t, it doesn’t matter, because them treating you as an inferior doesn’t mean you are one. You may not have the same definition of superior as they have. Some P people are straight up oblivious about hierarchies.
You pay a super cheap subscription fee to use the canteen. It serves the same rotating set of dishes that are optimised for mass production to bring the costs all the way down. The canteen doesn’t make money primarily from selling food or subscription.
Instead, this canteen would attract a lot of people, so you install lots of advertising space and you rent those space. Let the advertisers essentially subsidise food.
You basically pay for food by watching ads. Solves overpriced takeaways or the need for cooking at home.
According to ChatGPT, I could with a UK passport go to PH with a tourist visa and just extend every month for 3 years, and then I’ll have to leave and come back.
Is this true?
Sorry if this is the wrong sub. I need to do some research for a project.
If you’re in a rural clinic or on some smaller island in the Philippines, how often do you need to send something to a bigger lab/hospital maybe on a bigger island/population centre for testing? What’s the average turnaround time?
If I go to driving school at 30 am I gonna get laughed at?
I used to think the stereotype is that they make checklists and gannt charts and puts everything in the right place, but maybe that’s ISTJ.
27M Chinese here. My culture has a rule I really dislike that the children are the parent’s default retirement plan.
I have 3 siblings. They are now all established in their careers and are making good money. I have been unemployed against my will for several years now and this gap alone is killing my upwards potential. My siblings want me to stay home and care for the parents in the event of an illness because I have the lowest career opportunity cost.
I have dreams and goals too and I’m far from giving up. I don’t want to be stuck home for the rest of my life taking care of people.
AITA for refusing?