Looking For A College To Study Robots
Q: Anybody know of a good college to go to for robotics study in the Southern California Region that doesn't require superhuman skills to get into? I live in Los Angeles and was interested in switching my carrer from programming to robotics. I'm having difficulty trying to pinpoint how schools acutally label a course in robotics. Is it an electrical engineering, mechanical engineering or computer science? Although I would imagine that all these diciplines are required to completely understand what your doing. I'm really interested in all 3 aspects or robotics mentioned above and would love to hear from others about their experiences in studying through a college course in robotics. Also are there other ways to study robots that can get me job in the field? i.e. mentorship, or non-traditional university work?
A: -Caltech or Berkley would be your best choices I would think. As for study programs, robotics is a collaborative science and is usually done in a robotics lab. A qualified robotocist is likely a masters degree and would require training is all the different areas, electrical, mechanical, and computer engineering. Hope this helps! -On way to start is looking at the FAQ. Also, any good engineering college will have something. Cheers, Charles Merriam Here's a section from the FAQ (http://www.truegift.com/robots): 4.3 Studying for a living: universities and research Robots are cool, and, well, you have to go to college anyway. People commonly ask about finding the best university to study robotics at the undergraduate, graduate, and post-doc levels. The simple answer is "it depends". First, recognize that the study of robotics is at the confluence of many different fields, each progressing rapidly. Robotics is a new field, and people are still learning what to emphasize to efficiently create people skilled in researching and building robots. Every department will be different, and will focus on the large or small, practical or ambitious, with a hardware focus or software focus. Many universities will have robotics groups in within their Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering or Computer Science departments. Most universities will have some post-docs studying robotics in fields ranging from Environmental Engineering to Behavioral Psychology. The universities are all different, and you can learn a lot from the college web pages. Robotics is coming to age in a world with the Internet. If you can't get a sense of the focus and direction of the research groups from the web pages, then there is no focus or direction. If the web pages have no gallery of pictures or movies of previous robots than the department probably hasn't built any. Count how many students, professors, projects, and facilities are mentioned to get an idea of the community. Try to get a sense of how they teach about robots; figure out if there are formal classes and at what level. When counting