From Self-Driving Cars Back to Robots: 1.5 Years Bridging Classic Robotics and Learned Policies

Abstract: A self-driving car is a robot with wheels. Eighteen months ago I traded that body for arms — and had to learn how much of robotics the autonomy stack had let me skip.

• What Self-Driving Gave Me — and What It Didn’t
• The Classic Half
• The Modern Half
• Where the Two Meet
• 1.5 Years, In Order
• What I’d Tell Someone Making the Same Move

People assume I switched fields. I didn’t. A self-driving car is a robot — perception, state estimation, planning, control, all of it, just wrapped around a body with two degrees of freedom and a very forgiving action space. When I moved to arms and manipulators in early 2025, I wasn’t leaving robotics. I was meeting the parts of it that autonomy had let me skip.

What Self-Driving Gave Me — and What It Didn’t

The Classic Half

The Modern Half

Where the Two Meet

1.5 Years, In Order

What I’d Tell Someone Making the Same Move

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