Flying Solo - the Start of my Robotics Freelancing career
Hi! I've taken a couple of months off for a career break, but I'm finally ready for the next step... to start working for myself! Yes, you heard me correctly, I'm going to be self-employed 
! After talking to a couple of people who are already freelancing in the robotics, I'm pretty convinced that I want to go in this direction. So here's a blog post to explain a bit of my reasoning, my updated portfolio, and the kind of assignments I'll be looking for.
Enjoy!
Why Freelancing?
So, freelancing or independent contracting often has the reputation of not being a stable source of income or the risk of uncertain employment. Even though the first might indeed be a valid concern (although it depends on the kind of assignment you accept), the second might not be as valid in this day and age. Robotics seems to be booming, and if anything, going to the European Robotics Forum has convinced me even more of that. However, do ask me in a year or two if I still feel this way, as I still have to get started and receive assignments. But all of those are logical reasonings, of course.
My personal reason why freelancing attracts me so much is the independence aspect of it. To be able to have the freedom to choose the assignments I'm interested in, to choose the people I'd like to work with and to learn what I want to learn, and to leave when projects don't align. That is such a powerful part of independent contracting that I feel I resonate with, which will not only be beneficial for my own career but also for the companies I'll be working for. They won't be fixed to me, and I'm not to them, but of course, we'll all be hoping to build a good relationship.
Networking seems to be a very important part of freelancing as well, as it seems that the best assignments come from word-of-mouth through people who know you. I am quite active on LinkedIn, and I love going to conferences and talking to/meeting new people. I just have to start getting better at remembering names, as last ROSCon I hit my limit already on the first day! I still have hope for AR in glasses to become a thing, but until then, I need to start using mnemonic devices... or get businesscards (like a caveman!).
And finally, freelancing in robotics tends to be quite competitive. It is therefore important to keep learning as the field constantly evolves. Today it's an LLM-powered arm, tomorrow will be a ZRN-powered soft robotic fish (I made ZRN up, obviously). And that is something that I've felt the need to do for the recent years after finishing my PhD. Sure, I've managed to transition to ROS2 and Gazebo/Webots and did game development during Corona, but my quantum computing beginners course remains untouched! Not sure if the latter course has anything to do with robotics, but you never know!
Taken by C.D. Dieleman
My new Portfolio
With this new phase of my career also comes yet another update of my website. When I rebuilt my website almost two months ago, I started using mkdocs for materials, which I very much love! I didn't have to change that much to the theme then, but I have made quite some changes now, starting with a good update of my about page which now includes contact information, my skills, and a short form of my CV (which you can find as a PDF right under my summary).
I've also updated my projects page as well, which was first just a whole bunch of links that diverted people to other project pages. Now, it lists each of the projects under a different subheader, with a short summary and relevant links to papers, videos, and project pages. And this is accompanied by a list of skills associated with each project as well! I still have to figure out what to do with skills that I've accumulated during jobs but not as part of a project (like I've worked with CI and Docker quite a bit but not really as part of the fun ROS2 with the Crazyflie project), but I'll figure that one out as I go. Also, there might be better terms to give to certain skills... or I could just give it all the skill "embodied AI" and be done with it (just kidding, of course!).
But the best thing, and I'm a little proud of this as well, is that I've built in a macro that collects all the skills from my project page, accumulates them on my about page, and those that occur the most have a . Pretty cool, right!? And there's more... you can click on them! If you do, a search bar will open that will search the full website for occurrences of that term (so you can actually check if I'm proficient in said skill or just talking hot air). It will even search a selection of my old blog posts on the Bitcraze website and refer to those directly on their website. I've got them rendered here again for you:
Have you tried clicking them yet?? It's apparently not super apparent that these are clickable... but I might be over-optimizing here. I'm already in the process of adding the publications I've written to the search index as well and thinking of letting my skill list be automatically generated based on all of that... but at one point, I've got to start this thing called actual work and not work on my website for the rest of the year (but if I could... I would!).
What kind of Assignments?
So mainly, I'm looking for short-term, part-time assignments, for about 8-16 hours per week. Those who have been following me might already know, but as a previous cancer patient, I have tri-monthly scans that I'll need to take into account. So going for short-term assignments is not only a good reason for me but also for the client to expect specific deliverables in that timeframe and not be surprised by dropouts. I need to be ready to go into surgery at every three-month interval, so I'll make pretty well sure that I'll be ready with something before then. So there, a pretty important reason to go for short-term contracts, so I hope that makes sense! Take a look at my portfolio here.
Next to that, I do have some expertise in aerial robotics, swarm robotics, and was a former employee of Bitcraze (the Crazyflie company), so if anyone is interested in strategic consulting, I'll be able to offer that too at an hourly rate. If you'd like to make use of my academic skills in doing a literature review as a researcher in the robotics field you are interested in, or need help with your own research subject, I could also help out with training or educating your employees or students on different concepts within my areas of expertise. And if you happen to need a speaker at your conference or someone to write an article about a robotics event, I have plenty of examples of those on my media page.
In terms of topics, of course, I would be more than available to help out with those topics that I have experience in, which are aerial robotics and embedded systems. But, I do have to say that one of my drivers is to learn, so it will be an added benefit to have the opportunity to work with something new that I can add to my portfolio, like another platform, robotics framework, or simulator. The hourly rate can always be discussed if I'm a bit slower due to needing to do extra research, but if the topic is worth it, then why not!
Please take a look at my website to see if there is a good fit or share it with anyone you think might be interested.
Conclusion
Being self-employed is starting a business, and I need to start actually selling myself. My imposter syndrome brain is now shouting, "What are you saying!?" but... apparently, I am smart, hardworking and I catch on to new things very quickly. Switching to ROS 2 and simulation was hard, doing a PhD was hard, switching from IDE to mechanical engineering was hard, but that didn't stop me. Now, brain, could you please be a bit more positive!?
I'd like to thank a couple of people who helped me make this decision, and that is Mat Sadowski (and his blogposts as well), Jennifer Beuhler, and Júlia Marsal Perendreu. Thanks to these robotic contractor veterans, I got to know enough to take the leap into freelancing.
I'm actually quite excited about this! I'll try to give regular updates on the process.