Hi,
My Son is looking at doing Robotic Engineering. Can anyone please suggest some colleges that have good Robotic engineering programs
Georgia Tech, Stanford, RPI(it is one of the R schools, but I may have the wrong one), CMU, Vanderbilt are some I know off of the top of my head. Look up the scholarship list on the FIRST Robotics website and it might lead you to some other colleges since a lot that give scholarships for FIRST are schools that engage in robotics engineering. One route students do is to major in EE or ME and do a concentration in robotics or devices. It gives them a broader education but still the concentration that would be attractive to a company that is recruiting in robotics engineering. I also suggest your son engage in robotic competition clubs. My DD did Robojackets at Georgia Tech and really enjoyed it.
@itsv, thanks for the response. I will have my son check on the options
This really helps…my son was confused on what majors to take…now atleast he has some direction
Now that your son has above info, I bet he can learn lots more via websites etc. When I selected engineering (1980, the GC knew very little about it… and we had to borrow the college catalogs from the guidance office. The internet make it so much easier to research colleges / majors 
WPI is a school that offers an undergrad degree in Robotics
A mech e, EE, or CS degree can all work in robotics. Robotics is just the multi disciplinary intersection of those fields. One of those degrees might be more versatile if he finds working on “robotics” isn’t for him. You generally want to not be in such a broad major for undergrad.
@UserJami
You might want to learn more about the very successful WPI robotics program @ https://www.wpi.edu/academics/study/robotics-engineering-bs
As reported, the average WPI BS graduate in 2016 with this major accepted a job with an average salary of $73,276. Those who do not offer the program feel it is not a good idea. That same year from the same graduating class, the average BS in ME graduate accepted salary was $65,150. Robotics is a new major which appears to be in demand! It is interdisciplinary in nature and students focus in different directions. ALL new majors evolve out of older majors. Electrical Engineers used to be physicists etc.
My son is a mechanical engineering major with a concentration in mechatronics ( i.e. robotics). It gave him a good blend of skills. He understands the structural aspects ( statics, Dynamics,and even heat transfer for one job) for the robotic systems he works on. He can even do a quick drawing of a part he needs and send it out to the shop to be made. He went to CalPoly.
My son is a senior at CalPoly in the same program that @HPuck35’s son graduated from. I’d echo everything he said.
Thanks for all the responses. This is really helpful
Also get a copy of the book, “Is there an Engineer Inside You”. My DD found it helpful. Also look at the profiles on the colleges by the American Association of Engineering Education. http://profiles.asee.org/ You can find out how many students major in each major, research dollars, admission and graduation info etc. We found it very informative.
If you want to read about an interesting professor doing some incredible robotic work, look up Dr. Ayanna Howard at Georgia Tech. The students love her and she is doing some incredible work plus she is really nice and willing to talk to students about their career plans. http://www.robotics.gatech.edu/2013-site/team/faculty/howard https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2018/02/28/robotics-legend-ayanna-howard-on-the-future-of-human-robot-interactions/#1225dfec2959
He should know where ever he goes, robotics per se, will actually only represent a small part of his curriculum. Even at CMU, a program well known for robotics, only has one class with the term robotics in it as part of the curriculum. Most of the classes in that “specialty” are typical ME classes like dynamics, controls, and mechatronic systems. My point is, he doesn’t have to limit his search to programs with the term Robotics in the title.
At WPI, In addition to the project work in robotics, there are seven undergraduate courses listed as Robotics Engineering (RBE). They are:
1. Introduction to Robotics, an interdisciplinary course;
2. Unified Robotics1: Actuation;
3 Unified Robotics II: Sensing;
4 Unified Robotics III: Manipulation;
5. Unified Robotics IV: Navigation;
6. Modeling and Analysis of Mechatronic Systems;
7. Industrial Robotics
The first course is introduction to robotics and it is a multidisciplinary course. The next four of these courses are interdisciplinary as they draw upon electrical engineering, mechanical engineering and computer science. Each of these courses are equal to about 3 semester hours. One senior level course is "Modeling and the analysis of Mechatronic systems and recommends coursework in fluids, thermodynamics and mechanics.
The 2016 Post Graduation report for Robotics Engineering reported on 39 BS and 7 MS graduates who were employed by 48 different entities including:
Amazon Robotics,
Bossa Nova Robotics,
Carnegie Melon University,
Dell EMC
DEKA Research & Development (Dean Kamen’s Company, founder of First Robotics Competition)
General Dynamics Mission Systems
Google,
MIT Lincoln Lab,
Rethink Robotics
Saint-Cobain
Space X,
UMASS Medical School,
United Technologies,
University of Texas.
Three of the BS graduates were double majors in CS, Electrical and Computer Eng, and ME.
As already noted above, their average salaries were $73,276 which was $8,126 more than the average accepted salary of their ME classmates.
Please note, the Robotics Engineering program is ABET accredited.
Rose Hulman, Michigan Tech, Harvey Mudd.
@retiredfarmer, I appreciate your passion for your alma matter. It was in the hunt for my son’s final choice until the deadline. Ideally though, you’d be a bit more objective. No class can be taken without excluding another. Anyone who is interested in any degree, at any school, is well advised to look up the curricula of each school they are considering and comparing it to the rest they are considering.
If you pursue a robotics or mechatronics type degree you need to understand the focus of the program. How much time is spent on ME, EE and CS type skills will have a significant impact on what you can do with the degree. I interviewed a handful of BS/MS mechatronics students from Carnegie and was very surprised at how little they knew about structural design. For a different role they might be great, but it certainly was not what I needed.
Chico State has a mechatronics program which is on the robotics side.
Most robotics programs are graduate programs. Looking at the university graduate/Phd research projects, he will notice that the projects vary by industry and type of robot (artificial intelligence, mining, medical, drones). Undergraduates may be welcome to work in the graduate labs. Determine how flexible his intended major (usually EE, ME or CS degree is to see how many electives he can choose to cover all three majors and robotics or mechatronics graduate courses).
How is the robotics engineering undergraduate program at UCSC? Is it ABET accredited? My daughter has been admitted into this program. I wonder how reputable this program at UCSC. She got admitted into mechanical engineering program in USR, SDSU and other universities as well. She has a dilemma on which program/school to go.