[tbrownaw]

One of suggestions was Machine Learning and meta programming. Other one was robotics. Problem with both of these is that entry barrier is pretty huge. You have to go to university to do it well and not everyone can go to university.

Why? You need to put in significant time to do well, but are the needed resources (books, people to talk to, etc) really not available outside of a university?

[analyst74]

I am curious how one can break into robitics as a web developer.

The two obvious paths I can see are: a) quit job and get masters or even PHD in robotics; b) become rich and found a company like Elon Musk.

[derefr]

My own plan, from a similar starting position, is to buy one of these[1], and start tinkering with it until I have a good set of "hard problems" I've run into. Then, read the textbooks, with a motivated eye to solving those problems. I won't necessarily solve any of the Hard Problems, but I'll hopefully get a journeyman-level ability to converse with others in the field about those problems--and from there, it's just a hop, skip and a jump to making friends in the field and being tossed pithy journal articles to read.

[1] http://www.irobot.com/us/learn/Educators/Create.aspx