When Johnson & Wales University decided to create a robotic engineering associate’s degree starting this fall, the school’s administrators had more on their minds than creating flashy robots to attract students.
After a year of researching robotics programs at other schools, they decided a robotics degree could be an interim step to educating more engineers, said Frank Tweedie, dean of the Johnson & Wales School of Technology.
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“We were looking for the bridge between high school and college,” Tweedie said, because most students don’t want to commit to a four-year engineering degree. He said administrators thought the hands-on nature of studying robotics engineering, and the two-year program, would help make students more comfortable with math, science, and engineering.
The next step, he said, would be to encourage graduates to earn a bachelor’s degree in engineering. That is a key to the nation’s future competitiveness, he said, because “the number of engineers coming out of college is not as great as it used to be.”
Of more immediate concern is enrollment in the school’s department of engineering studies, which Tweedie said has a capacity of 50 students, but fills only half those slots. He expects the robotics program, coupled with five new courses and upgraded resources, will boost engineering enrollment.
As part of the robotics curriculum, students will be expected to design, build, program and reprogram small robots, through various projects involving teamwork with fellow students, Tweedie said.
“It’s more than just building pretty robots,” he said. “It’s about problem-solving. They’ll build it to perform certain tasks. They’ll have to understand the relationship between electronics and mechanics.”
There are about 165,000 working, installed industrial robots in the United States today, said Don Vincent, executive vice president of the Robotic Industries Association in Ann Arbor, Mich. Japan has about 400,000, because “they have been quicker to accept robots in more industries.”
Robot sales fell by about 38 percent in the first half of 2006, Vincent said. But that’s because for industrial robots, used mostly in manufacturing applications, sales are driven by the automotive industry, which hasn’t placed a lot of orders in 2006.
The market for auto-nomous robots, however, has huge potential, said Chad Jenkins, assistant professor in the department of computer sciences at Brown University. Auto-nomous robots are ones that can perform desired tasks in unstructured environments, without continuous human guidance.
“iRobot is the best example of a robotics company on the move,” said Jenkins, who started the Brown University Robotics Group in 2004. The Burlington, Mass.-based company has designed auto-nomous robots that search, detect and help dispose of explosives, which are being used by the military and law enforcement agencies, as well as consumer units that sweep and mop floors in homes (the popular Roomba and Scooba).
There is a definite demand for robotic engineers, Jenkins said.
“More than anything, there is a huge need for motivated people who have education in math and science,” he said. “Robotics is a large interdisciplinary field. It requires a diverse set of expertise for research and development.”
For Johnson & Wales, Tweedie said, the next step is finding places in Rhode Island where graduates of its new can enter the work force. The university is looking into companies such as Yushin America in Cranston. The company is a subsidiary of the Yushin Precision Equipment Co., based in Kyoto, Japan. It designs, manufactures and sells robots for removal of parts from plastic injection molding machines.
“We need to see what industries are looking for,” Tweedie said. “We’d like to keep [graduates] local.”
Vincent said there are jobs for people who build robots, but he thinks there are more jobs for people at companies that use robots and automation. Because manufacturers are increasingly using automation for manufacturing processes, that field eventually could be the one employing the largest number of robotic engineers.
Tweedie said the associate’s degree in robotic engineering could help get a student’s foot in the door, but most employers are looking for a bachelor’s degree.
That’s why instructors would encourage students to go on to obtain a bachelor’s degree in engineering, he said: It would broaden the scope of jobs students could apply for.
“We have to strengthen the sciences, strengthen the math for our students to be more competitive,” he said.
