A plea for roboticists

[ZZII 527]

Originally Posted by WernerNYK

WPI offers first undergraduate "robotics engineering" major...

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...ad.php?t=50361

I would go so far as to extend this plea for roboticists to other technical universities as well. I know a lot of roboticists (by Gui's definition) at MIT, but they took it upon themselves to learn both sides of the coin. Mechanical Engineering and Electrical Engineering are two separate majors here and many students go through their four years of undergraduate education without getting much exposure to the other side. (Havng taken the famous 2.007 Mechanical Engineering course, formerly Prof. Flowers' 2.70, I can tell you that building those robots is a purely mechanical endeavor, with the exception, I guess, of soldering your motors to the connectors.) We have entire courses on control theory, but I've relied on non-coursework projects (like FIRST) to actually put the theory into practice.

I will echo Gui's argument: FIRST's control package is incredible. Spend some time with it in the offseason. Build a Segway, or an arm that can balance a cup of water 5' out while your robot goes over a speed bump. And teach your HS students how to do it; you don't need transfer functions and pole-zero plots to understand the idea of a virtual spring and damper. This will prepare them to take it on during the very short FIRST season. And, when they go to college, they will demand an education for roboticists.